And we’re optimistic as we partner with our large brands that we’re going to start seeing that, turn the tide as we move through 2024. We’ve got great partnerships, I think Carl called out on the call Nike that’s been one of our stronger businesses that’s certainly our largest business we’re having that work has been a really good thing for us. And where we’ve got some brands that are a little softer. I think we’ve got good plans in place with those teams to turn them around and get them moving in the right direction.
Robbie Ohmes: Thanks. And then, my follow-up is actually I want to follow-up on Kate’s question. When you look at the vendor community, are you seeing prices coming down?
Steve Lawrence: I wouldn’t say we’ve seen prices coming down, certainly there are places where we’ve negotiated better deals on things, but we haven’t seen as freight settle in that necessarily translate through a ton of cost reduction so far. But we continue to work and negotiate with vendors on that front.
Robbie Ohmes: Got it. Thanks.
Steve Lawrence: Thank you.
Operator: Our next question comes from Michael Lasser with UBS. Please proceed with your question.
Michael Lasser: Good morning. Thanks a lot, for taking my question. To see when we compare Academy’s results to especially in the footwear and apparel categories, to several other retailers especially those retailers that also index lower income segments. That the footwear and apparel categories in particular, seem to be doing worse at Academy’s than many other players out there suggesting it’s eating market share A) why do you think that is the case and B) outside of some of the factors that you pointed to what do you think is the principal strategy that’s going to allow Academy to stabilize its market share, because if it’s simply a function of its core customer base getting healthier that might prove to be elusive? Thanks a lot.
Steve Lawrence: Yes, I’d start with I’m not sure I agree with the premise of the question. We can tell you we look at market share on a monthly quarterly annual basis. We use Circana as primary source for that and if you look at Circana data, they will tell you that we picked up market share broadly across the business in 2023. We’d also say that we picked up market share over a 4-year stack pretty aggressively considering the fact we’re still up about 25% versus where we’re in 2019. And I would also say when we look at our comparison in footwear and apparel to other retailers in general, the results I’ve seen as others have called out and gone through the earnings cycle for the most part are at or maybe a little better than broad-based retail.
I mean we do have a competitor, who is out performing us right now. I think we have a different customer than they have. I think, we’ve got a more middle income consumer, versus a high-end consumer. We’ve certainly seen the high-end consumer continue to spend a little bit more than the middle or lower income consumer, is a little more pressured. So one of the ways we combat that is continuing to build out, the better best end of our assortment and get access to more premium product from our existing vendor base like a Nike like a new balance. And we’ve had some really good success on those fronts. We continue to bring in new brands, so that we’re ahead of the curve there. And have them in some cases first to market and it’s going to be a journey for us as we move forward.
But we are not losing market share, the data doesn’t really support that, and we actually like we’re picking up market share from every data point we see.
Michael Lasser: My follow-up question is on the gross margin and the elasticity you’re seeing to any investment that you might be making either promotions or price. Would you see how much would, you see an improvement in sales, if you’re willing to sacrifice some of the gross margin gains that you’ve achieved. And as a quick housekeeping note, how much will SG&A grow how much will SG&A dollars grow this year, due to investments that you might be making in wages or labor within the store? Thank you very much.
Steve Lawrence: Carl and I are going to tag team this one. I’ll start on the margin front it’s a question that I think every retailer asks themselves on a regular basis. If I promoted more would I see a higher sales trend and you certainly understand the math is Michael that if you sell you know a discount of 25 off, you got to sell 33% more units to offset that. And so, what we’ve seen candidly throughout the course of 2023 in part of ’22, is when we’ve leaned into promotions during kind of non-peak time periods, when the customer is not willing to shop we’ve seen a trade down in AUR, and we haven’t seen an offset in terms of unit growth offset the sales decline. So, we’ve been very thoughtful about where we plan our promotions, as we talked about.
We plan them around the big market share moments on the calendar, like a Mother’s Day like a Father’s Day, like an Easter, like a back-to-school, like a holiday. Ad that strategies work for us, I mean if you look at our margin our merch margin for Q4, it was down about 50 basis points. We had offsets and other lines to help pull the total gross profit up, but we did certainly lean into promotion a little bit during Q4. And I think that that definitely helped. So I think, you’ll see us continue to run those plays as we move forward, but broadly promoting all the time we don’t think is the pathway to success.
