Sam Poser: I know it’s tiny, I know it’s a tiny amount of business that you’ve done so far in the quarter, and the big–and the huge weeks are coming up, but can you give us some color on, I guess, how it’s going, how much did the first couple weeks inform the guidance, or is it just–you know, any color you can provide there?
Mark Worden: Sam, you hit upon it that it’s really hard to give any guidance to this point because the big weeks of sales are ahead of us, so anything we’re seeing right now is not really material to our overall expectation of what the quarter is going to turn out to be.
Sam Poser: And in the fourth quarter historically, what has athletic to non-athletic been, and boots within that as well as a percent of sales?
Carl Scibetta: Boots in the non-athletic categories for the quarter tend to run about 45% of the total of the women’s and the children’s non-athletic business. I don’t have the number in front of me, but typically non-athletic versus athletic in the quarter, where we have been a 50/50 business, tends to drop to more of a 60/40 non-athletic business.
Sam Poser: And based on what you’ve seen on the overall trends, do you expect–and how you’ve bought it, do you anticipate that we could see a 65/35 this year? Is it sort of going in that direction from the non-athletic/athletic into this fourth quarter?
Carl Scibetta: Sam, that will be determined really by weather. As we move through the quarter, the weather has a major factor in boot penetration, and weather seems to be turning colder and we’ll see what happens.
Sam Poser: You bring up a good point, and then I’ll get off, over the last six or eight weeks, we’ve seen the weather get cold, then get warm, then get cold. Did your trends in those categories–in that category follow that, because I’ve heard from other retailers that they were feeling great about four or five weeks ago when the weather was cold, then it got warm and they were groaning, and then it’s getting colder again and they’re feeling better. Are you seeing, or have you seen the same kind of rollercoaster over the last, call it six weeks or so?
Carl Scibetta: Yes Sam, we certainly see the weather as always playing a factor, and you have to look at the weather this year and last year, but it flip-flopped a little bit. What I know is we have great boot inventory, we’re in a much better position than we were from a delivery standpoint from a year ago, and we fully expect once the weather–and we just have seen some movement in the weather, it stays consistent, we think we’re ready for a great holiday season in the boot categories.
Sam Poser: All right, thanks very much. Continued success.
Operator: The next question comes from the line of Mitch Kummetz with Seaport Research.
Mitch Kummetz: Yes, thanks for taking my questions. Kerry, on Q3, I don’t think you gave the comp on a year-over-year, unless I missed it. I think you only gave it on a three-year. What was it versus last year, and then could you also give us the months, or maybe just a little more color on how the months played out for the quarter?
Kerry Jackson: Yes Mitch, we were down 9.9% against 2021, and what we saw was it was fairly consistent at that level except October increased over the average.
Mitch Kummetz: Okay. Then back to Sam’s question, I know that the first couple weeks of October are small, but has that trend from October continued into November, has it gotten better, worse?
