Jim Duffy : Hello, thank you. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. You guys gave a lot of detail on categories on the call. It sounds like you’re having good success with Women. You’re having some success with new products. Men’s core product however has been a challenge. Sam, can you speak to customer acquisition dynamics? You’re turning to promotion to reengage existing customers? Is that improving customer acquisition as well?
Sam Sato : Yeah. Hi, Jim, thanks. Yes. So we’re obviously excited about the continued traction we are gaining with Women’s. Total business was up 10%. Obviously, the success we’re starting to see with the introduction of AKHG and we are supporting that with investments like the 20-store reconfiguration we’ve done in order to give Women’s greater space and improved shopping experience. And equally important, as AKHG starts to grow, it requires its own dedicated space in the stores, as well. So those are all good things and our customer acquisition, new customers are reaching this 50-50 point now between men and women, which is exciting for us. Our current female shoppers are at its highest peak that over the last three years and so that’s, again, exciting for us.
So we remain confident in our product strategy and in our marketing strategy to not only engage the female shopper, but also as we discussed a few calls ago and continue to €“ our target consumer that 40 to 50-year-old, we’re getting traction there, which is a good sign. And we want to be careful that we don’t alienate our core consumer who’s in their mid-50s, but at the same time, recognize the need to build a business for the future based on a slightly younger consumer that really is in the spending kind of height of their lives and careers. So, both of those elements to our marketing strategies and customer acquisition strategies, we continue to see really good progress there and we are pleased with what we’re seeing.
Jim Duffy : Okay. And then it’s a step backwards in promotion from previous strategies, I am curious how you see the balance between promoting the support sales and moving inventory versus conditioning the consumer that the brand is always on sale. Perhaps related to that, I was wondering if maybe this causes you to rethink your pricing architecture. It sounds like you’re having success engaging new consumers with core products. But if I interpret your comments, it sounds like new consumers aren’t coming back to €“ or I am sorry, your existing consumer base isn’t coming back to core products unless they’re on sale.
Sam Sato : Yes. So, really important question and so a couple things I’ll say. One is, we are always going to balance and take a strategic approach to how we balance price and brand integrity. We want to be really careful about that and in this heightened promotional period we are in, everyone is faced with inflationary issues, and it clearly has taken a toll on the consumer and we’re not immune from that. Having said that, we think that the products we build to deliver against solutions and durability needs and expectations that our consumers have, our price value relationship is really good. It’s just we are faced with a highly promotional, volatile environment right now and so, while we’ve got to be more promotional than we are historically, we are also making sure that we’re not having a fire sale, so to speak.
And I think in certain areas of the business, specifically, again, back to Women’s and AKHG and some of the new innovation like our Funk No! men’s underwear, the success in those areas continue to show that our brand strength is as good as it’s ever been. It’s just we’re competing with highly promotional activity that now is about share of wallet, and that share of wallet has €“ the spend has reduced because of inflationary issues. So, I wouldn’t say so much that we are rethinking our pricing, our regular pricing strategy. We’re going to build products that satisfy the needs of our customers through the lens of durability and performance and solution based. But we also recognize that at times, we’ve got to be competitive. We’ve got to make sure that we are strategically taking the appropriate actions to not allow our inventories to back up and then that creates a whole different dynamic as we experienced two years ago.
But having said that, we’re investing heavily in innovation and we recognize that innovation with the right price value relationship is critical and so our teams continue to think about that and think about other areas of the business whether it’s price or adjacent categories that we can continue to innovate into.
Jim Duffy : Okay. Thank you for that perspective. And maybe one last one, should we interpret your comments on the cautious approach to 2023 to mean that perhaps you’re backing away from planned store openings?
