ANF
#Just to underscore that, we started the pricing strategy for Hollister in the first half of year with certain categories so by the time it got to back to school it was a complete repositioning which has been very successful for us.
Yes, I would say broadly speaking your numbers are right.
We had a little more than a dozen, we have a little more than a dozen stores that we have fully remodeled interior.
We have seen strong returns from those, double-digit as you mentioned, traffic lifts versus the control group as well as sales lifts and we are seeing that consistently and it does give us confidence to continue the rollout and the rollout for 2016 is 60 stores.
I think that is a testament.
The CapEx split, I don't have the dollar numbers specifically but we do plan to open 15 new stores and 10 outlet stores so that is the portion that will be brick and mortar and the balance will be going to remodels.
Yes, we are in the beginning process of that.
We are looking forward to rolling one out by the end of this year.
As we mentioned, we will have a little bit of a different story in the first half and the second half of the year regarding AUC.
In the first half of the year, we are reinvesting in the product, we will be benefiting from some of those macro opportunities but since we are reinvesting in the quality as we have not lapped that as we have in the second half, we will see a slight increase.
And as we get into the second half of the year where we did reinvest in the product, we do have some macro opportunities on certainly like for like product to have an AUC reduction.
So we will have an overall slight reduction in the second half of the year.
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I will jump in on our overall comp guidance for the year.
We believe our comp guidance is realistic and certainly given the conditions in the market, we don't feel any need to be more bullish at this point.
No, we continue to feel very good about our inventory management and if anything, expect that our inventory management to continue to improve as we roll out more improved processes across the chain.
So inventory is certainly not a constraint, it has been well-managed and we expect to continue to be well-managed as we move forward.
To start off with the categories, we expect to see in the women's business both women's and girl's business a continuation of our momentum in tops and our goal is obviously to get that momentum going in the men's and the guys business so that is our focus for the first half of the year.
Regarding our brand positioning, I think we talked about it a little bit but we have really established our core beliefs and convictions and we are working on an internal communication of that over the next several months.
And I think you will see that in the back half of the year.
It certainly is not going to be a light switch that we have out there but it is going to be an evolution in how we approach our customer.
At this point we are really not ready to share due to competitive reasons sort of what did and did not resonate with our customer.
But we do have some customer research that we've done around the world to help us solidify where both brands are going.
They clearly will both have some heritage associated with them and they will also have a new modern take.
<UNK>, regarding the question around AP and inventory, the accounts payable balance reflects actions that we did take this year to extend terms with our suppliers.
We also made available to them a supply chain financing platform and that is primarily what unlocked the AP increase.
I believe we rolled it out late second quarter in 2015 so it began in late second quarter I think fully implemented by third quarter.
Regarding the Hollister remodel, all stores in the fleet, all Hollister stores in the fleet are candidates for remodels.
We would like to see this roll out broadly across the chain.
There are definitely considerations including lease terms and lease renegotiations that we are taking into account as well as the expected return we are going to get in every location.
So we are reviewing each remodel decision on a case-by-case basis with the goal of rolling it out broadly across the fleet.
And to answer your question on the store autonomy in both brands.
Yes, that is something that we paralleled last year between both brands to roll out to our store management.
I'm sure you remember in the recent past we focused more on the way our stores are presented rather than on the business driving piece of it.
So they have been given tools to understand and read their businesses.
I've had an opportunity over the past year to visit many of our stores and it is certainly a work in progress and we have made a lot of progress on it and that will continue as we move forward.
On the retention rates from closed stores, it really varies depending on the markets in which we close.
We don't see typically a lot of transfer to other stores mainly due to the fact that they are not necessarily close to other stores so that has a bearing on it.
We do see some migration post closing online but it is minimal.
I think what we are seeing more is the move to online that has been happening and continues to happen and as we close these stores from an EBIT perspective, we are driving productivity overall in the fleet.
Related to gross margin guidance for 2016, there are a lot of puts and takes on gross margin in 2016.
Although the AUC is up modestly in the first half, it is down in the second half.
We expect it to be down for the year slightly.
On the AUR front, a lot of puts and takes there.
So FX is the headwind on AUR but we expect continued AUR benefit both from inventory management activity as well as better selling at regular price and our ability to step away from promotional activity during the year.
So a number of puts and takes on gross margin that drive the guidance back to flat.
We don't break down our comp expectations at that level.
But overall I think given the current environment, we expect to continue to drive strong conversion and many of our efforts are focused there.
We also are working on brand positionings to better communicate our brand story and try and move that traffic number, that traffic has been a headwind I think in the industry.
So we have a realistic expectation around traffic.
We expect continued improvement and continued strength in conversion.
And as we mentioned earlier, driving AUR up modestly based on our ability to step away from promotional activity and with the customer's response to our product offerings.
