So, as we make the corrections that we have made and continue to recalibrate our assortments in women’s, we anticipate our eCommerce business improving. And we have already seen a corresponding lift in that channel as we’ve corrected our assortments in women’s. I would expect that to continue as we move through the year, and I would expect our eCommerce business to improve sequentially, just as we have outlined in our outlook. I also expect our stores to continue to perform well. You mentioned the outlet stores, that channel, I think it’s very clear that the consumer demanded value in the fourth quarter. That channel was performed better than our other channels in the fourth quarter. And I think that’s clearly because we offered really exceptional value in that channel.
And our retail stores, we bumped up against a consumer who — was demanding really aggressive promotion, particularly since our average unit retails were substantially higher than they have been in the past. So, as a part of recalibrating the assortments, we’re also addressing those things. So, I expect our store’s performance to continue to improve as we move through the year as well. We’ve also got some exciting things happening in stores. Our in real life pilot, I mentioned that that is a pilot that we ha we put in place bit over a year ago so that we could learn about how we could create a much, much better experience in our stores for our consumers to drive conversion to higher levels. We’re seeing better results in those stores than in other stores.
And we are — so we are tweaking that model, and considering rolling that out to additional stores when we are confident that we’ve got the financial model correct. And I’ll let Jason, speak to the gross margin part of that question.
Jason Judd: Yeah. With regard to merchandise margin, as we look through the year, it’s really a story of increasing balance to steal Tim’s word. So, we will be seeing in the back half of this year costing improvement on a like-for-like product basis year-over-year. We are seeing that in the POs we are writing right now. And I think that that is very aligned with what we’re hearing in the market. On the other side of the story is the fact that this value customer we expect to stay with the market for what I’ll call the near term, so over the next number of quarters. And definitely need to see a set of price points attractive to them that would offset some of the costing benefits. Now it’s not a full offset, because typically this is handled through markdown, but to Tim’s point on balance, this is also handled by giving that broader balanced assortment into our core, not just the fashion that they’re looking for.
And so, do expect to have, as indicated with our EPS guidance on the year attrition in the merch margin rate, a lot of that’s driven in Q1, which we talked about, and then balance achieved by the end of the year.
Dana Telsey: Thank you.
Tim Baxter: Okay. Thanks Dana.
Operator: And that is all the time we have for questions today. I will now turn the call back to Mr. Baxter for his closing remarks.
End of Q&A:
Tim Baxter: Thank you all for joining us this morning and for your continued interest in our company.
Operator: And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call and we thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
