ZUMZ
#Yes, I'd tell you, I think we've got a pretty good history of managing inventory.
As you can see here this quarter, we're pretty much in line with our square footage growth, with just slight growth over prior year on a per-square-foot basis.
As we think about Q2 and the rest of the year, our goal is really to grow sales faster than we grow inventory.
We're going to work really hard to match those two things.
If we start to see the sales pick up, you're going to see us chase on the inventory side.
If things were to go the other way, we're going to continue to manage it as conservatively as possible.
That includes really being strategic in our mark-down cadence.
Where we do see the opportunity to move on inventory that's aging or falling out of season, you're going to see us do that as well.
I think the inventory story for us is really going to be a tale of where we see sales go.
We're going to work to manage it as closely as we can.
I feel pretty good with the cyclatory data at the end of the first quarter from an aging perspective, and how current it is.
Our goal will be to keep it is current as possible, even in these tough times.
Sure.
Again, I think it's a very complicated question, <UNK>.
I think there are many factors around that.
I like to talk about the things I think that are ---+ that we can impact and control.
That's again how we take advantage.
I think to a large degree, specialty retail is suffering from a lack of interesting product for consumers.
I think as trends change ---+ in our case, again, brands ---+ that means brands and items, as well as fashion cycles ---+ move, the one thing that my experience in now decades of doing this, is that things always are cyclical in the consumer world.
I don't see that as ---+ I don't think that has fundamentally changed in any way.
In fact, I would tell you that I think what we're seeing here is part of the cyclicality of consumer spending as they're rotating dollars to where there's interesting things to spend.
When can offer interesting things in some of the brand items and fashion cycles, the consumer returns to spend the money back on fashion and style.
I don't think any of those fundamentals have changed around the world.
I do think that we also have to put this in the context of the longer-term trends of how every retailer, I think, has to ---+ I think we have to understand that part of the hangover of the great recession is a level of frugality amongst all consumers.
I think we have to factor in and discuss how we provide value for that consumer.
Value can be defined many different ways based upon each retailer's niche positioning in the market place.
For us, I think that goes back to how we can ---+ and how we're felt about as a brand by our consumers, as well as we do have a value strategy we're constantly trying to play to give our consumer a choice there.
I think we also have to understand that part of the challenge in the retail world today is about shared consolidation in the market place.
We are going through, as a retail industry, a very painful process over the last five and six years niche.
You have to look niche by niche within the retail segment of consolidation of share.
As you've heard me say before, I think in each niche there's going to be a dominant player that emerges a winner, a winning player in each niche of retail.
That will defined differently whether you're a commodity player, and lifestyle player, or a fashion player.
I think in lifestyle retail, where we're playing, I think the winning model in my opinion is a global lifestyle footprint where you are doing something in a highly differentiated perspective, again working with young brands and helping young brands grow their business across a global platform.
As a global retail partner for them, you're providing a very distinctive in-store experience as part of a community.
Then you're leveraging all that on a domestic and global basis, with an incredibly strong integrated channel-less, omni-channel effort.
Those are the things I think that determine winners over the long term.
I think you have to ask is not just about the power of the consumer, because consumers get some pretty great deals in today's market place.
It's about that these deals aren't sustainable over the long term.
There will be a class of retailer that emerges as defined uniquely by the position of each niche of retail.
I think we'll see dominant players emerge over the next five years.
It's not just about the health of the consumer, it's about the health of retail to a certain extent.
The consumer is just taking advantage of what I think is going to be some spectacular deals ---+ there has been.
I think unfortunately in our segment, as we said in back-to-school, there's probably a group more spectacular deals with some of the bankrupt locations closing.
I think it's a complicated question, both about the consumer's position in the market, how they're feeling about it, and then have to go with the tremendous shifts in consumer behavior around technology, and the speed of trends on a global basis.
Thank you.
Sure, <UNK>.
Let me address that.
We think about marketing in two regards from our perspective.
We are again ---+ I think we have a unique brand position.
I think the market ---+ our consumer market research we've done, and we've talked about some of the conference over the last year have supported that we have a very unique, very strong relationship with our customer from a brand perspective.
We're seen as peers, as one of our customers' peers in the market place.
I think we've seen nothing but further support in terms of market research of that over the last year, the strength of our customer positioning.
When we think about marketing, we break it down into two groups.
We have our brand marketing team, and we have our tactical marketing team.
We are spending a lot of time on the brand marketing side right now.
As you know, over the last few years we've spent a lot of time working on redefining our brand experience, and doing the consumer market research ---+ the first time we've ever done consumer market research at Zumiez.
We've confirmed, I think, our unique positioning from the consumer's perspective, that it's been consistent with the brand position we've had in place for a number of years.
Now what we're challenging ourselves on across the organization is that we're looking at this new generation of the consumer ---+ I'll refer to the generation as the group.
We are challenging ourselves in every consumer-facing aspect of the business today, how do we have to function differently in this area, and laying out plans over the next three years to execute against that.
You're not going to see us cut back on those plans at all when we're talking about long-term brand efforts; because again, we think the culture and brand are the pillars that underlie these successful winning retail positions.
Now that's the brand side.
We also have our tactical marketing sides, which is really where <UNK> was talking more about our opportunity to both cut as well as push.
Trust me, if we are getting results in our tactical marketing efforts, our email campaigns, our page search campaigns, our search engine observation campaigns, we're going to invest more dollars, not less.
Now if the page search doesn't return at an appropriate ROI, then that's where we may have to think about it.
We have to think about that in terms of the catalog efforts we have been doing, and how widely we would mail those.
We will push on all these fronts if we can, but it's all about delivering on the tactical side actual results.
I think the way we're going to do that fundamentally is yes, we can drive some more traffic to the stores through those techniques; but most importantly, we have to focus on making sure that we have the product people want to buy.
That's even more of the connecting dot for us, is how do we make sure we're pushing on the key product areas, putting the right touch points, whether they be digital, print, catalog, whatever it is in front of our customers at the right time, and then maximizing those through the omni-channel campaigns.
That's how we're thinking about it.
Again, it's about leveraging and getting ROI on the investments on the tactical side.
Thank you all for your interest in Zumiez.
I am going to conclude the call, as ---+ echo some of what <UNK> said, is we are at the point where based on our results over the last 12 months is we need to be show good results for the consumer.
We're in a show-it mood at this point.
We're ---+ while we might feel good about green shoots, we need to deliver it and see what happens over the next few months in our business.
We appreciate all your support.
We appreciate the quality of your questions today.
We'll look forward to talking again here over the next few months Thank you, everybody.
