And we’re incredibly focused at Kate Spade at driving innovation and — the big change that we saw was delivery — faster delivery of that newness and innovation, particularly in the outlet channel with the Madison delivery, and that’s not a one-off. This is a focus of ours as we get to know our core customer. We continue to innovate on product and experiences with the brand and those launches are working. We have more in store for fiscal ’24. We talked about the launches of our Dakota bag coming this fall and other changes that we’re making in the business that are having an impact. So we feel we’re clear eyed about the opportunity at Kate. We are accelerating the pace of innovation to accelerate our progress, and we feel good about the product that we have in the pipeline to continue to drive that trend as we move forward.
Scott Roe: Yes. And so, as you think about the pace of the year or two, just maybe a little more on that. So first of all, we’ll see a significant sequential improvement in Kate in the first quarter. I don’t know, if we said that already. But just like we do in the overall business. So while that’s certainly positive news, and we — and Joanne already said, we’re tracking quarter-to-date, very much in line with that. Also remember, the comps get a little squirrely between the quarters here. And when we look at a multiyear stack in Q1 and really the balance of the year in our guided outlook. It’s a fairly consistent theme with international being relatively stronger in the first half. Again, comps being a lot of the driver of this and then a little more in North America in the back half.
But when you zoom out a couple of clicks and just look at the trajectory, this is very much the current pace of business being projected in our outlook going forward. And again, I would just repeat, it’s not heroic in the way we’ve done it, and it’s very balanced. It’s not back half loaded. It’s very consistent in terms of the way we guided. You had a specific question on freight. We didn’t identify it. I would tell you, freight is largely behind us now. The one quarter where we’re going to see a benefit is Q1. And if you recall, from years past, that’s when we started seeing the big freight and then we had one quarter where we were still down last year in gross margin because of freight. So we’ll get that benefit on a year-on-year basis in Q1.
But for the balance of the year, it’s a much more moderate benefit as we look forward. So less than a full point as we look at this year.
Mark Altschwager: Thank you.
Operator: Your next question is from Dana Telsey of Telsey Group.
Dana Telsey: Hi. As you think about this upcoming year in this upcoming fiscal year and improvement in China that you’ve seen, how are you planning for Asia and China? And how are you thinking about Europe go forward? And in particular, on the channel distribution, any unpacking of what you’re seeing in wholesale and how that’s differing from the retail performance? Thank you.
Joanne Crevoiserat: Yeah. So let me start with China. Our categories and our brands are resonating with Chinese consumers. We drove 50% growth at constant currency in the market in the last quarter. And I know that the last year number was COVID disrupted, but that was an increase to our prior peak at constant currency. So we’re seeing a consistently strong business in China the consumer continuing to value what we represent in the market. And our teams in China are doing an excellent job building our brands and connecting with consumers. As you know, we’ve been in that market for two decades, building brands, understanding the landscape and we’ve been agile to be able to pivot with the consumer and deliver in a way that they continue to respond to.
As we look forward, we see an opportunity for continued performance in China. We talked about our guide high-single digit growth for this year. And just to frame it, it continues to expect that growth to our prior peak. So we do expect gradual recovery in China continuing throughout the year and as Scott mentioned, it’s based on what we’re seeing and the trends we see in the market today. So we expect a continuation. To your point, we’re seeing tremendous opportunity as well in other Asia. And that’s a part Japan and the rest of Asia is a part of the market that is now almost equal to China in terms of size, and it is also growing fast. We expect high-single digit growth in that region as well as in Europe. And in those markets, we’re increasingly engaging the local domestic consumer base.
And that’s what’s been driving, if you can think about it over the last three years, that’s what’s been driving our business. We also expect that there’ll be some benefit of tourism as tourism recovers. We’re seeing some of that today, mostly in Asia, a little bit in Europe, but not as much in the West at this point. We’re not counting on that in our outlook. Again, we’re taking the trends that we’re seeing in the business and we’re projecting those forward and we think a prudent way. But our international business is strong and our teams on the ground are engaging consumers in effective ways and the consumer is responding to the product and experiences which we’re delivering.
