We had the product available and had the trial. The second piece is we’ve added the four brands. We’ve expanded the original brands into new categories. And I think when you put all of that together, we just wind up getting outsized growth. Going forward, we haven’t guided next year. We’ve got some work to do before we lay out our guidance for next year. My intuition is we’ll probably say we’ll grow 2.5 to 3 points of penetration next year. And we really do want to see some nice continued growth from our strong branded vendor partners as well.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Sam Poser with Williams Trading. Please proceed with your question.
Sam Poser: Thanks for taking my questions. I want to ask, like usual, about the inventory. But you said the inventory is going to be lower than expected. So where do you anticipate the inventory being at the end of the year? Can you give us a number, like the range of what you anticipate?
Greg Hackman: Sam, it’s Greg. I don’t think we can give you a good prediction on the balance sheet. What I would tell you is the number is lower than we thought as our merchants work really hard to cancel orders where appropriate, et cetera, et cetera. So we brought the inventory down, as Jim described, and that’s relevant from the cap freight perspective, but it will also put us in a better position. You saw that at the end of Q2, our inventory was up about 83%, and now it’s 54%. And that is a combination of our merchants doing a really good job of managing their receipts based on sales and their inventory position coming in, if you will, to the quarter. So — but I can’t quantify a number for you.
Sam Poser: Well, let me just — let me — one more try here. You were $641 million at the end of Q2. You’re at $592 million at the end of Q3. Can we look at another $40 million drop? Is that a reasonable number? Or I mean is it sort of working its way down? Because it sort of worked — it bounced way up. It went up $55 billion and another $35 million, almost $100 million and then another 50 that from — it kept going up sequentially. So can we expect the inventory to be — now start to come sequentially down sort of the way it looked like in from Q2?
Greg Hackman: Let me just continue and then Jim can chime in. I mean if you think about the drivers of the growth that Jim outlined on the call and we’ve talked about before, it’s to support the exclusive brand product, right? That’s the growth in the DCs. That was about half of our overall growth year-over-year. So half of that is DC inventory that primarily is driving or supporting the exclusive brand penetration growth. And then the remaining roughly 50% is split pretty evenly between comp store inventory levels and in terms of new stores. When you think about the comp stores, we’re really happy about how that inventory is positioned. The weeks of supply at the end of Q3 is in line with non-COVID historical weeks of forward supply.
So could that come down a little bit? Perhaps. But we’re pretty happy with kind of that normal 27 weeks of supply. And then if you think about that remaining quarter, it’s new stores, and we’re going to continue to grow new stores. So maybe it comes down a bit, but I would tell you, overall, we’re pretty pleased with the level of inventory. Are we a little bit heavy in men’s work boots still? Yes, we are. Are we concerned about that from a markdown liability? Absolutely not.
