'The call from David Jones that changed my life'

This story is written by Brendan Collogan, who worked at David Jones between 2006 and 2013. He is now Co-Founder and Managing Director at Three Are One.

It was August 2006, when the phone rang in mum's kitchen in Kotara and my life quietly split itself into a before and an after. 

On the other end was Maria from Human Resources at David Jones, offering me a job as database marketing coordinator, in the marketing department. 

When I hung up and told mum, her eyes filled instantly, and then she pulled me into the kind of hug only a mother can give. The sort that says I have worried about you for twenty-two years and this is my reward. I could feel her pride through my shirt. 

For her, this was more than a son's first proper job. This was David Jones. A powerhouse Australian brand. One she'd grown up with and loved. 

I pulled myself together and called dad. He was quieter about it. Possibly a little stunned that his tearaway son had somehow landed a place at such a respected company. His advice was clear. 
Accept the offer. Immediately. 

I was fresh out of Newcastle University and still living under mum's roof in Kotara. A few days later I said goodbye to her in the driveway, packed the car with everything I owned, which wasn’t much, and drove away toward the big smoke: Sydney. 

I didn't know it then, but I would never move back to Newcastle. 

That phone call changed my life. 

Seven years, one unlikely apprenticeship

I remember my first day clearly, because Simon Smith was the person who gave me the chance to join David Jones, and I would end up staying seven years. 

My main job was to coordinate the direct mail program. Yes. Mail. Actual mail, with paper in it. Hundreds of campaigns a year, from exclusive private collection invitations to the annual Clearance and Christmas Shopping Nights. For those events alone, more than 600,000 invitations went to Australia Post. 

The trips to the mailhouse in Ermington became a ritual: standing on that floor as pallet after pallet was loaded onto trucks, watching the physical weight of a spreadsheet I'd built. Those trips to Ermington were born of an enormous attention to detail. Borderline paranoia, honestly, and I say that with love. Every David Jones member had to receive their invitation on exactly the day we planned. Not the day before. Not the day after. The day. 

I inherited that standard and have carried it with me ever since. It has made me insufferable about missed deadlines and, I like to think, quite good at my job. 

That first role opened doors. It let me work across the entire marketing department and, in later years, the Financial Services team. I was learning constantly, and I was learning from the best: Lisa Ronson, Bettina Brown, Georgia Chewing and Geoff Ikin, led by Damian Eales to name only a few. It was an unbelievably talented team, and each of them would go on to be, if they weren't already, among the very best executives and marketers in Australia. At the same time, the company was performing exceptionally well. 

I didn't realise it at the time, but I was being taught by people who would go on to shape the industry. My later career moves would be to join one of them at their new company. Their standards have become mine. They became my mentors. They became my friends. 

188 years, 6,000 people, weeks before Christmas 

So when the news came through last week that David Jones had gone into voluntary administration, I felt it more than I expected to. It is an iconic business, 188 years old, and more than 6,000 people now face an uncertain few months. 

I wish I hadn't seen it coming. But from my own experience in their stores, where I still do all my clothes shopping, it did seem inevitable. 

What I keep coming back to are the people at the other end of these headlines. The ones on the shop floor today. The ones in the back office. The ones who have given years of their working lives to a place that meant something to them, they way it meant something to me. 

I know what it is to love a job like that. And I can only imagine how it feels to have the ground move beneath you a few weeks before Christmas. 

I thought about home, too, and about mum. There is a David Jones at Kotara, not far from where I grew up, and for plenty of Novocastrians a trip there was part of the rhythm of the year. Mum attended every Christmas Shopping Night and she knew to check the mailbox daily and tell me her invitation had safely arrived (on the right day!). 

What the company couldn't take with it

Maybe that's why this has hit me the way it has. 

A company can enter administration. The stores can change hands, or close. But what it gave thousands of people over almost two centuries doesn't go with it. 

It gave me my first real job and my first understanding of how a big organisation works. It gave me a way of paying attention to detail that I still use every single day. And it gave me wonderful people. 

I don't know what will happen next for David Jones. I hope there is a buyer. I hope there is a rescue. I hope the team members who turn up to work every day get the answers and the support they deserve. 

But I do know this. In August 2006, a phone call sent a kid from Newcastle down the highway to a city he barely knew, and he ended up somewhere that shaped him for the better. It changed my life, like thousands of lives like mine. 

For that, and for everyone I met along the way, I am grateful. 

Thank you, David Jones. I hope this isn't the end of the story.