DSW
#Thank you.
Well, I think, as we look at stores, as I've mentioned before, there's some real competitive advantages to stores, and we don't believe we have built out our footprint as big as what we think it can be long-term.
I will tell you, I'm in the process of working with our team to figure out, what do we think that looks like.
What I will tell you on new store performance for 2015, we are actually very satisfied with the results we generated.
They achieved our ROI targets, as we look at the business.
Even the small market doors, we can see that's generating significant incremental volume to the business.
What I think we've got to sort of understand is, what's the right type of experience we want to create in smaller markets.
And is it right for that to be a representation of the DSW brand, if it's only 6,000 or 8,000 square feet.
And if we can solve that, or when we solve what that's going to look like, that creates all kinds of opportunities for us to expand through brick-and-mortar and digital combined.
So I think, giving you specifics, on how many doors we think we can get to in the future, we are not ready to answer that question today.
But that's work our team is working on right now.
Sure.
In terms of the actual merch margin changes for the quarter, our total merch margin was down by about 300 basis points, and about 250 basis points of that was related to kind of promotional markdowns that we took during the quarter.
The biggest other factor during the quarter was shipping.
We did see deleverage in the shipping rate of 50 basis points.
And then, we had some offsets, we had positive impact from our rewards reserve.
And that was offset by some unfavorability in IMU, that kind of netted out to nothing.
So the two big impacts were related to the markdown rate, and the related to promotions, marketing promotions and the shipping rate.
And in terms of accessories, comps, do you have that handy.
Accessories comp was down 4% for the quarter.
The merch margins for next year, I mentioned it a little bit, we're expecting to get some of the promotions back, the promotional markdowns in the fourth quarter back.
And that improvement is going to be offset a little bit by shipping.
We think there's about 10 basis points deleverage in shipping.
We think there's some deleverage in our rewards program of about 20 basis points.
I didn't mention it earlier, that we do think mix is going to have an impact, both from athletic, as well as from the kids program, the kids launch.
We think that mix impact on margin is unfavorable by about 20 to 25 basis points.
And then, we've got a number of other little things playing in there.
So broadly, we think that the margin is flattish, but there's some puts and takes.
Thanks, <UNK>.
I would say that as we look at our business, we believe in our merchant team, <UNK>.
I think that to me, is the thing that we're going to leverage.
And I mean, this is our belief, is that we've had a lot on their plate, and they've been distracted.
And when they have the ability, and the time to be able to sit down, and evaluate how things are performing and react to that, we've demonstrated in our history, that we can respond.
So for me, a big chunk of it is our merchants.
There are also new system capabilities that we have installed, that we need to leverage.
And so, I think <UNK> it's a combination of those two things.
I don't think it's one or the other.
It's a combination of both.
Yes, I think that it's fair to say that most of the recovery relative to the promotions we took, will be driven more in the back half of the year.
But we typically just ---+ we don't give quarterly guidance, in terms of how that's going to play out.
But it's fair to say, that more of that margin hit we took, happened in the fourth quarter that we'll be recovering.
Thanks everyone for joining us today.
I want to make certain, I reiterate my commitment to generate steady top line growth, increase profitability through the words I described, focus, tempo, and disruption.
There is a significant amount of work that we have ahead of us, but we're convinced that we've created a strong foundation that's going to allow us to get DSW back to the long-term, sustainable, profitable growth that all of you are looking for.
Thanks for your continued support of DSW, and I look forward to meeting, and updating you on our progress some time here in the near future.
Thank you.
