MOV
#Sure.
Well, on the first question of market growth, I think you've actually seen that it has been in combination with a slowing ---+ a slower-growth retail environment overall.
And I'm sure everybody here follows our retail customers.
Overall, comp stores have grown in a low single digits and I think that the watch category has mimicked that.
What we are pleased with is that a number of our brands, our largest brands have significantly surpassed that growth rate.
, but that still causes retailers to focus on inventory control and productivity overall.
We are not the only brands that they carry.
They carry multiple brands in multiple categories.
And I think you are seeing that in a slow growth retail environment, but it is continuing to grow.
So we are pleased with that.
So I think that kind of answers part one and part two of your question.
On the wearable front, as a company, we have always been a leader in embracing innovation to make beautiful products.
And so, when technology allows us to do that, we will embrace it and those are the projects that we are working on.
I think you have seen a lot of wearable products out there so far that are not beautiful products or commensurate with what a watch company would produce and much more commensurate with what a consumer electronics company would produce.
Those are the projects that we are working on and that is really probably all I'm going to say, other than the fact that we are partnering with several technology companies on that front.
And as soon as we have more news to announce about that, we will.
We believe that that is a continuing trend and we have modeled our business assuming that retailers will continue to focus on inventory growth.
I think you also have the combination combined with that of part of our retailers' sales moving into the e-commerce world.
And I think you hear that typically it's between 10% and 15%, so you need to carry less inventory in the e-commerce world as it's now one location, and in some cases, drop-ship locations doing significant amounts of business.
So I think that (multiple speakers).
Overall, we have looked at price increases, and they are selective, of approximately 5% to 8%.
We have chosen I think, and to use <UNK>'s words here, gross profit over volume.
So recognizing and building into our models that we will have some effect on overall volume.
We felt it was the prudent thing to do in this type of environment, where our costs have materially increased due to currency fluctuations.
I would like to add that there are many price points that remain untouched, so it was very selective.
It was not a flat percentage across the portfolio.
We were ---+ obviously, we are very good at controlling our expenses and we were forecasting to really invest everywhere around the globe.
By the end of the year what ended up happening was a lot of our international locations did come in slightly lower in some marketing expenses, so it was a little bit here and there around the world.
You know where we are a very complex organization.
But primarily international and primarily around some of those local marketing spend.
I will add to that that you also had the effect of, in some places, sales coming in lower, so because of that some of our commitments to our partners came in lower as well as currency.
So you had a strengthening US dollar, which changed some of those expenses as you translated them back into US dollars.
I will address that one, <UNK>.
That is in isolation; that is just the FX impact.
Had we not taken the price increase.
Yes, had we not taken the price increase and then offsetting that obviously is because we are seeing some growth in our overall forecast; would be the price increases.
And growth.
Yes, and then there will be some growth as well.
It's one of the ---+ it's the major component (technical difficulty) the FX.
Well, we see that trend to continue throughout this year.
Hopefully, sellthrough will accelerate towards the second half of the year and things will rebalance.
But right now we are seeing the trend to continue throughout the year.
We are very comfortable with where we are from an IT perspective, as well as from a facility perspective.
We are ---+ while we are saving approximately $5 million this year in our overall overhead, that is net of investments that we will make in growth in certain markets around the world where we believe we have opportunities.
So we will continue to invest in the Company, but that is built into our forecasts and our models for the year.
I think we still feel comfortable that long-term margins can go into the mid-teens, but I think we have to see FX basically stabilize for a while and then see volume growth.
Right now Movado has ---+ we just launched very recently in the UK.
That is one of our international markets of focus.
So we're not thinking of expanding to many different markets; there's markets we already have a position where we need to grow the business.
But we want to be very thoughtful.
It's not adding doors; it's building one door at a time.
We have a position in China now that ---+ there are certain concessions that we run which are performing really well.
So we want to be, again, very focused on how we built this.
Again, it's not every market.
Right now the main focuses are the UK, certainly China, and then Brazil we are also, as I mentioned in my remarks, seeing very good traction.
I just want to ---+ the performance-based pay was down for the quarter $2.1 million.
I think at the end of the third quarter we also announced that it was down for the whole year.
We don't give out specifically that number, but based on the performance of the company this year, we did not have any performance-based compensation.
I guess I will address a piece of that and then others can follow.
We don't disclose, obviously, what our grid is for the program, but you are correct, we do have a 10b5-1 program in place which we will adjust accordingly when the window is open.
It's still a strategy of ours to continue to invest back into the Company.
I think we announced that that plan is no longer valid at the end of <UNK>'s remarks, based on the current environment and currency rates.
And we have no plan at the current time to reissue a longer-term plan.
We will increase marketing spend this year and continue to invest in our brand-building efforts around the world, so that is a continued focus of ours.
Obviously, we will do it in line with our sales growth.
Thank you, <UNK>.
I've spent my time learning.
This is a new industry for me, so the majority of my time has been learning.
Learning internally from the leaders around the Company, but people at every level inside of the Company.
Traveling to the different markets, meeting with key customers, meeting with consumers, and getting a flavor of the strengths of our different brands around the globe.
It has been a process of learning, to summarize.
And also starting to learn the talent that we have and putting together strategies that restore us to growth, because growth is a very important thing for us.
So that has been the majority of my time.
As you know, if you read my bio, I spent 15 years at the Estee Lauder companies and that was a great training ground for me.
I worked with some amazing people, so I'm taking some of those learnings now to Movado Group.
And one of the main learnings is to put the consumer first and really understanding what consumers want.
And also executional excellence.
Execution is the only part of strategy the consumers see and that is one of the renewed focuses that we have in the Company.
I'm very pleased to see that our talent around the globe is really embracing this as a key strategy going forward.
Well, I will tell you that the most surprises ---+ there has been several good surprises.
I knew there was great talent in this company, but as I was able to spend more time not only here in our headquarters, but traveling throughout the different regions, I was pleasantly surprised to see we have great people in this organization.
I was very excited about that because talent is such a key driver for success for any organization.
My time ---+ I am spending time here in the US.
This is our core market.
But also making sure that the market, the priority international markets are visited and we work together.
So I'm spending a lot of time here, but also a lot of time on a plane.
Okay.
I would like to thank everyone for participating today, and we look forward to talking with you on our next conference call.
Again, thank you very much.
