OLLI
#<UNK>, I don't think that's probably changed.
But I think that with the magnitude of the calls that are coming in, I think that it's still, I think we probably would've told you 8 out of 10.
This is not a metric that we actually measure on a reporting basis.
It's more of a heartbeat.
And as far as why are we able to be more selective, I think that maybe we are able to, perhaps with our scale and our visibility, we are able to drive a little bit harder bargain, and we are able to get some better deals and that's translating into better sales because we are offering the consumer a better deal.
Sure, <UNK>.
Right now, currently today we have three stores in the State of Florida.
We are pleased with the initial results in the state.
As we said previously, they're in line or slightly above our expectations.
And right now we are very excited to continue to add the stores and we hope to have six to eight stores in the State of Florida by the end of the fiscal year.
<UNK>, I think we've talked about this before when we've all been together.
I think what everybody has to understand about the closeout business is that the traditional and the real retailers ---+ what I call the real retailers ---+ they set the cornerstone and then we set the discount off the cornerstone.
So, if the real retailers are reacting and lowering their prices, while we might get closer to not as big a discount in the near term, in the long term ours is strictly a reaction to what the real stores are selling it for.
And then we buy into that.
So, what can we sell off of what we call the real stores.
So, we don't feel any pressure whatsoever in that regard.
<UNK>, I will take the first question with regards to the components of the benefit of the 120 basis point improvement on the overall gross margin.
30 basis points came out of the merchandise margin and 90 basis points came out of the distribution and transportation side of the business.
As we had said earlier in our last call, that we expected to still see some benefits from the higher freight costs and fuel costs from 2015 in Q2.
We expect to not see such a large benefit in Q3 and Q4 of this year on a year-over-year basis from the distribution and transportation side of the business.
And the margin side, as we've always said, we are shooting to get back to the 40% gross margin.
We are feeling a lot better that we're going to be able to get pretty close to the 40% gross margin in FY16, which is a little bit ahead of our expectations.
But, as we've always said, too, we will evaluate and probably give that upside to the customer in order to continue to drive the sales volumes and the benefits of the Company.
With regards to the imports on the back half of the year, there's definitely some price competition going on from the transportation side on the import side of the business, keeping in mind that's not a material part of our business as it is for a lot of the larger other retailers that are out there in the marketplace.
We do get some benefit from that and we are hoping to continue to see some slight benefits in the margins related to the import side of the business for the remainder of the year.
Curt, this is <UNK>.
With regards to our cash balance is about $30.7 million at the end of the second quarter.
We will have some more usage on the cash coming down here during Q3 as we continue to build inventory for the holiday season.
At this point in time I don't believe we will actually go into the revolver for the remainder of the year, and we'll actually generate a significant amount of cash right before the end of the holiday period.
With regards to our capital allocation or our fiscal policy, we are still in the process of evaluating that with the Board, and haven't made any decisions on what we're going to do from a capital allocation perspective.
But we hope to have a little more color on that here in the next six months or so.
Curt, I will take that one, as well.
With regards to the overall Ollie's Army members' activity, very consistent.
We are now over 7 million strong in the Army.
They continue to spend about 40% more than a non-Ollie's Army member that we have, which has been consistent for a long period of time that we've been doing this program.
The Ollie's Army member, as we had said before, spends close to $33 to $34 per transaction, and non-Ollie's Army members spends about $23 to $24, and our overall basket is about $29 a basket when we blend everything together.
And that's been consistent for the last couple of years, as well.
Probably the color that we would like to talk about would be, we are seeing a little stronger activity in the Florida stores, which are outpacing our expectations slightly ---+ and they were good expectations.
And the other new stores are absolutely either meeting or exceeding.
But we are absolutely seeing a common denominator of strong activity in Florida.
We are not expecting such a large benefit.
We have a 36% effective tax rate for the quarter.
We would not expect as large of a benefit going forward.
We expect the full-year effective tax rate to come in at about 38.2% versus our original guidance of 38.8%.
So, we expect to see a slight reduction but not as significant as Q2
This is Mark.
No different than anything we've ever done.
They are part and parcel.
Now, would there be an item or maybe we had a little bit more.
Certainly.
But there was no exception to the rule on any markdown whatsoever.
Our coffee business has been just fine.
We are comping the comp.
We are very, very pleased.
And we offer a very, very strong value for the quality of the product.
And we have developed an incredibly loyal following.
So, I'm really pleased with our results.
Mike, this is <UNK>.
With regards to our visibility in terms of how we buy and how we go to market, we don't have a lot of visibility into future quarters the way we secure our product.
In certain categories, we may have a little bit of visibility, but that's not the crux of our business.
We are not able to really give you a real good feeling in terms of how far out we're going to be able to see and give guidance and confidence of the overall future quarters.
But we can tell you, and as you guys have seen over the last year and a half, our comps have been performing very well.
Our momentum in our business has been very strong.
We feel pretty comfortable with the trends and how things are working today, and we believe we'll continue to move forward in a positive fashion.
I'm not sure we're baking into our figures like real tangible effect on the comps next year, although we got a long time to think about that yet.
But what we are doing is testing individual communication with the Ollie's Army members, so that after, if you, <UNK>, bought something and used your Ollie's Army card, we will know exactly what you did, that you reacted to whatever promotion or email or whatever we did.
We will know exactly that and be able to communicate with it.
It is customized serialization.
And we expect to really get into that testing ---+ when I say testing, the first effort, which is going to be probably painful in our results in trying to get it and trying to massage everything, that will be in the November-December period when we do a lot with Ollie's Army.
Yes, I'll give you the categories and then <UNK> can give you whatever detail he can share.
The categories that led the way for us ---+ and, once again, keeping in mind that more than half of our departments were very, very strong ---+ but health and beauty aids, housewares and candy, those were the three big drivers for us.
Stephanie, this is <UNK>.
We don't normally provide too much color on our overall category margins.
We just internally don't do that a lot.
But overall our blended margin came in pretty favorable, as I said, 30 bps better than our prior-year number on the merchandise margin side.
Sure.
We're not able, obviously, to tell you the non-members frequency because we don't have that information available.
But the Ollie's Army member that comes into our stores, their frequency on an aggregate basis, on an annual basis, is about 3.5 times on an annual basis.
Our best-performing members, which we say shop over two times per year, runs about eight times per year on a visit perspective.
Thank you, operator.
And thank you, everyone, for listening to our second-quarter earnings call.
We are pleased with our results and the underlying trends in the business, and we look forward to speaking to you again on our third-quarter call in early December.
Thank you very much and have a good day.
