Andrew Rees: Yes. Yes. I mean if we look at — so what I’m referring to there is if you look at kind of industry data, so the market data for the footwear market, it is clearly down I would say, mid-to-high double — single digits in the first quarter of the year, and we see that continuing week-on-week, right? So there are some brands that are doing better than the market. Crocs is one of them. There are others that are also well well-known that it’s doing substantially better than market. At this point, HEYDUDE not doing better than the market, right? So they are definitely on different trajectories relative to the underlying market. I think, the underlying market is a reflection of the consumer spending less money on footwear.
Sam Poser: But they are spending more money on the stuff they really like. So wouldn’t — I mean I guess the question is, what do you guys need to do to — I guess, what was different than what you anticipated with the HEYDUDE brand? And then what do you — rather than have it be just the market as you’ve done lots of good collabs and things like that, that have performed well, both with Crocs and with HEYDUDE, what do you guys have to do that can overcome that because you’re overcoming that weak consumer with the Crocs brand, but you’re not overcoming the weak customer with the HEYDUDE brand.
Andrew Rees: Exactly. So product and marketing, right? So we are optimistic about our pipeline of new product introductions for HEYDUDE, but some of them are unproven at this stage. And most of the new products is really — Wally and Wendy, but we are new derivatives of. But I think the Crocs of it will be improved marketing. And so driving brand relevance making the HEYDUDE brand relevant to more consumers.
Sam Poser: Thank you very much.
Operator: The next question comes from Tom Nikic with Wedbush. Please go ahead.
Tom Nikic: Hi everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the outlet stores that you’re opening. How are those stores being sorted, is it mostly clearance and liquidation product? Is it specially made for the channel? Is the product being sold there? Any different than what you’re selling in the wholesale channel? Just — I just kind of love to hear what — how you’re thinking about merchandising the outlet stores.
Andrew Rees: Yes. Great. Good question, Tom. So as we talked about, we’ve got 11 outlet stores opened at this point or through the end of March 6 that we opened in the first quarter of five that we opened last year. The stores, the format is pretty consistent with kind of a lot of other footwear brands, I would say. The front of the store is essentially full-size runs. So the consumer actually can drive consumer satisfaction, they can definitely find a product that they want and in their size. Those full size ones will be a combination of newer products, sometimes even current product and also some slightly older products that we happen to have in the quality assortment of. And then in the back of the store is a [centrally clearance] (ph) product.
And so it provides two vehicles for us. It provides one vehicle to educate the consumer about the HEYDUDE brand, allow them to find a product that they can buy and take away and enjoy and hopefully become a HEYDUDE brand fan. And then the back of the store, allows us to liquidate old product at much higher prices that we’ll be able to liquidate elsewhere and give the consumer incredible value in the back of the store. So I would say, we’re really happy with the way the store is working, and we’ve opened in a combination of markets. We’ve opened the markets that I would describe as sort of HEYDUDE heartland. We’ve also opened in markets that are a little bit more nascent for HEYDUDE. So we’re using the stores to introduce new customers to the brand.
And we’re kind of happy that both are working.
Tom Nikic: Understood. Thanks very much and best of luck.
Operator: And the next question comes from Jay Sole with UBS. Please go ahead.
Jay Sole: Great. Thank you so much. I’m hoping — can you elaborate a little bit on the performance of Crocs in China — because triple digit growth is really strong. If I’m correct, I believe it’s kind of like the low seasonality quarter, in China. So was there anything maybe related to timing or something that could have boosted that number? And then how are you thinking about spring? Do you think you can maintain really strong growth through the peak spring and summer seasons. And if you can tell us about that, that would be super helpful. Thank you.
Andrew Rees: Yes, that’s a great question. Yes, the first quarter is not our stronger quarter in China, you’re exactly right. It’s a sort of counter seasonal quarter. It does build through the quarter. I think the one thing that is different this year that we did call out in our prepared remarks is we did win a Super Brand Day on Tmall. For those of you not familiar, that’s a process you go through to bid on that and to get selected. We were selected because of our brand heat, we were able to showcase the brand and really — so that was a non-comp event and a substantial non-comp event in Q1, which is very productive. We do believe we’ll be able to maintain a very, very strong growth rate in China through Q2 and the remainder of the year.
