Promotional intensity is kind of settling into a more normal life state moving forward. So I don’t expect that, we’re going to see a tremendous uptick in promotions. Carl I know you’ve got a couple you want to hit on as well.
Carl Ford: Yes from a gross margin going forward standpoint, we’re seeing what’s going on with international shipping. We don’t put quite as much through the Red Sea as perhaps others do, but there is a delay coming around Africa, and kind of the equipment that’s being used. And so there might be modest deleverage there, but we’ve got we’ve talked about like outbound transportation and how we run our trucks between our distribution centers and our stores. We’ve got opportunity there associated with WMS, just keeping out the trucks and doing multi-stop shuttles, which we don’t really do in any large way now. The second would be just in that broader supply chain space if you think about kind of labor management aspect associated, with what we’re doing within the distribution centers.
Yes, we get a new tool in WMS that is – a lot more sophisticated than the almost 30-year Exeter system that we’re using now. And just from an overall labor management standpoint I would say the merchants are really leaning into this as well, as we think about cross-stock penetration or how much stuff doesn’t need to be put away and separately repicked. That’s a big opportunity at the company and Matt McCabe, the Chief Merchant and Rob, the new Rob Howell the new Chief Supply Chain Officer are in lockstep on this. We’ve seen that there’s betterment there and we started executing on that. Yes, I won’t reiterate kind of the merchandising stuff, but I am excited about our private brands offering freely in row, are doing well and we’re seeing customers resonate with that value opportunity.
The last thing I would say as it relates to you know specific to FY ’24. I want to be clear, we did not make our sales plan for FY ’23, although we ended with an inventory that was down 7%. And we feel was well managed, and the merchants really did a herculean effort at bringing that in where they wanted to. There was some promotional activity associated with pockets of inventory where when you’re planning on something a little bit higher, and it comes in after we re-guided in Q1. They took some actions and we’re ending clean now. We like our inventory position and so, we don’t think that we’ll have to kind of execute in that manner for FY ’24.
Chris Horvers: Got it. And then my follow-up just on the new store maturity ramp you lowered the year one given the new market mix, but as you think about like where can you remind us what you said about where did they get in year five because it sounds like you said there’s this very steep ramp to year five and that over the next five years it’ll get to the average – the average of the chain 10 years out. So can you maybe just provide some more color, because typically we think of double-digit comps in year one and then by year five you’re floating with the overall business?
Carl Ford: Yes so, we you know in our long-range plan we initially modeled this, we said 18 million in year one and then ramped five years from there. We didn’t put an endpoint associated with where we think they matured over time. We said it would come in close to where the average store volume is. We don’t think that that necessarily changes starting from a lower base right. So obviously, the $12 million to $16 million is meant to encompass a couple of different types of stores, right smaller stores and smaller markets, where we have less brand awareness. Probably would be towards the low end of that 12 versus new stores in the existing geography, where we have high brand awareness probably to the high end of that range, we would expect them to grow at a faster rate – at least two times faster than the company growth during the first five years.
That wouldn’t get them all the way to the average for the new store that’s why when you look at it over 10 to 15 year time horizon, we expect them to get there. And we’ve really seen this play out over time. If you go back 10-15 years Northern Florida was a new market for us, and when we looked at those stores initially they started off with lower volumes, because it was a new market. And as we look at them today, we’ve been in that market now over 10 years. Those stores are doing on average store volume so that’s how we’re looking at it over time, but it’s a 5-year faster ramp and then five to 10 year after that, but it’s settling at the company average.
Chris Horvers: Thank you very much.
Operator: Our next question is from Robbie Ohmes with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.
Robbie Ohmes: Hi good morning guys, can you talk a little more about you know you’ve mentioned how well the private label is doing. How are you thinking about getting the athletic apparel, the outdoor apparel some of the branded athletic footwear, are there things you can do to get those businesses to be a little stronger, or any initiatives underway how are things like L.L.Bean doing you know I’d love to get some color on that?
Steve Lawrence: Yes, so I would say in general a theme we’ve seen happen over the past a couple years, is new ideas have done very well. So a lot of the new brands you’ve heard us mention like L.L.Bean or Bogg Bags continue to do very well and we’re expanding a lot of these categories. You think last year, we’ve had Birkenstocks and a small number of doors or Ufos and a small number of doors we’re expanding those very rapidly. We’ve got new brands, we’re introducing this year like [Crush City Baits] that’s already off to a fast start. So new brands are working for us, and we’re scaling them out very rapidly. In terms of larger legacy brands, where they’re a little more challenged. We’re partnering with them, around making sure we’ve got a strong pipeline of innovation, flowing out to our stores.
