Jonathan Matuszewski: That’s helpful. And my follow-up question is on the potential for membership. Some of your competitors offer this. You could argue the backdrop to the consumer and housing in 2024 would maybe not be ideal for launching that. But on the other hand, your brand is clearly on fire. So would you say you’re more or less likely to pursue membership than you were a couple of months ago? And if you are more seriously contemplating it, what would be the aspects that attract you to that? Thanks.
Dawn Phillipson: Thank you, Jonathan. So we have a lot of active debate over our pricing strategy internally and have for several years now. The question is what is the right time to deploy a new pricing model? And a membership model is one of a few of them that we’re discussing and looking into. But we — until we have a better handle on when we would want to deploy a new pricing strategy, I think we’re going to kind of keep that a little bit close to the vest at the moment. So absolutely agree that we are actively engaged in what a pricing model and what our pricing strategy should be, but nothing to note at this point in time for you.
Jonathan Matuszewski: Great. Thanks so much.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Cristina Fernandez with Telsey Advisory Group. Please proceed with your question.
Cristina Fernandez: Hi, good morning. John, on your comments, you talked about a couple of initiatives for next year. I think there were new process for delivery, the trade business, interior designers. So I wanted to see if you could expand on sort of exactly what are your thoughts on being able to grow those businesses? And what are you going to do differently?
John Reed: Sure. Good morning. Yes, as I mentioned, the trade business is one we’re focusing on. We’ve seen some really nice growth in that business in the last couple of years. And so it’s one that we think there’s a lot of white space there. These are outside trade members who basically have their own businesses, and we’re finding if they can come to us to do kind of a one-stop shop. We give them the service they need, they’re really responding well. So we think that’s a great business. Our own interior designers as we added or started that program, I don’t know, four years ago or so. We continue to grow it. We continue to add more interior signers to stores because they just can’t keep up with the demand.
So we’re seeing some really nice growth there, and we’re focusing on that as well. Certainly, as we mentioned, we are opening more new stores and renovating more stores than ever in the history of the company. So that we see driving our business as well. Big time. When we open a new store or we renovate or move an existing store with the old design model to the new design model, we see a great lift in sales on those as well. So those are kind of the three things we’re focusing on, not to mention the furniture, the product, which is what we’re all about. We have great product. We execute right. If we show it off right, we do — our business continues to grow. And we’ve got an incredible design team as well as a product team, a sourcing team that continues to come up with new product and product that really resonates with our clients.
And that’s really when you think about it, that’s why we’re in business. People buy furniture from us, and we deliver it to them, and we make their homes a much better place than they were. And so every day, we focus on the product as well.
Cristina Fernandez: On the product side, any categories that you’re looking to expand in 2024, whether it’s outdoor or any others you want to call out?
John Reed: Yes, we’re looking across all the categories. As you mentioned, outdoor is one that we have focused on during COVID, and we continue to grow it. And the growth on it has been really — we’ve been very happy with it. With that, we kind of look at each room in the house and say, how can we grow the dining business? How can we grow the living room, great room business? And a lot of it is finding really great products and then expanding on the SKUs of those products to fit everybody’s needs because everybody’s room is a different size, a different shape, a different configuration. So if we have a coffee table in one size or we carry it in five sizes, we see a nice lift in the product as we expand our product that people love.
And we generally start rather conservative, and then then we see it’s working, then we’ll jump on it and catch up to carry it in many different sizes and SKUs and even finishes and so forth. So that’s a great way to grow the business as well.
Cristina Fernandez: And then one last question. I wanted to see if you can talk about the company’s kind of broader sustainability initiatives. Should we think about the donation to the nature conservative you just did as one time? Or is this going to be a recurring program and next year, we could see other donations, whether it’s to the same organization or others.
John Reed: Yes. We’ve had a lot of debate on that. As you guys all know, our world is burning up. And we feel compelled to help if we can. With that said, we don’t have any plans right now for 2024 to repeat what we did. It was kind of a onetime opportunity that we really didn’t want to pass up. But we’re always keeping our eyes open. But right now, I think in the plan and the budget that Dawn’s publishing here soon internally, we don’t have that in the plan.
Cristina Fernandez: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Peter Keith with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.
Peter Keith: Hey good morning everyone. Nice results here. I wanted to just kind of reflect back on your strategy around Labor Day weekend, where I think you extended the number of days around your advertising. And industry-wide, we do continue to hear about these peaks and valleys of holiday weekends being bigger and the troughs being lower. How should we think about your success for Labor Day weekend? And then carrying that forward, do you see more opportunity to extend, I guess, your visibility in advertising on upcoming holiday weekends.
Jennifer Porter: Good morning Peter, good question. So as you mentioned, that heightened promotional environment is still out there, the lengthening of times around those key selling, again, we do see that happening. We are pleased with the results of Labor Day. As we spoke about on our last few calls, we do have that subset of our client, who is very promotionally driven. And that’s where growth — in the growth stage, we want to be part of that consideration set. So we are really happy just lengthening the time of the marketing of that promotion for Labor Day. Looking forward to November and December, as Dawn mentioned earlier, we are not expecting to accelerate our promos over last year in any way. We do anticipate similarly to last year that the Black Friday promo was being pulled forward earlier in November.
