Sheamus Toal: Yes. Jeff, it’s Sheamus. I think, first, from a trend perspective, I think generally in the ballpark, our digital business was — in Q2 was in the low-single-digit percentage range. And as you said, and as we talked about in our prepared remarks, that was an improving trend throughout the quarter where we saw that flip to positive in the last 2 months of the quarter. I think as we look at our guidance and our expectations for the back half of the year, I think we have some different perspective by channel, and it’s probably best to understand it by looking at the different channels. I think, first, as we look at the wholesale business, as we’ve discussed and commented on a number of occasions, we expect the wholesale business to be up significantly in the back half of the year, contributing to positive results on the top line and helping us, obviously, from a comp perspective.
Secondarily, from a brick-and-mortar standpoint, given the macro pressures, coupled with continued expectations on our part for declines in mall traffic, we do expect the brick-and-mortar business to continue to be challenged during the back half of the year. And I’m really not anticipating any improvement in that trend at all. And then finally, in the back half of the year, to the point of your question, with respect to e-commerce, we are expecting a slight improvement in trend due to a combination of factors. Obviously, we’ve experienced positive traffic trends based upon the success of our marketing strategies. We’re not anticipating that those trends will dramatically improve from where we are now, but they are positive. So we’re still anticipating the success of those marketing investments as we move into the back half of the year.
And then I think we see some opportunity for increased or improved conversion as we move into the back half of the year as we’re better positioned in certain key items for the holiday season. And those key items importantly are further supported by some of our marketing initiatives. So I think that gives us an opportunity in the back half of the year relative to last year to see an even more improved trend in the e-commerce business versus what we saw in Q2. I think from an AUR perspective, we’re anticipating still a challenging environment and not really anticipating an improvement in the trend in terms of AUR. But overall, our digital business is expected to improve slightly based upon that improvement in conversion and that continued success of the marketing investment in terms of driving traffic.
Operator: Our next question comes from Dana Telsey with Telsey Group.
Dana Telsey: Nice to see the progress. As you think about the business model shifting to digital and then certainly, every indication as it becomes a more efficient business model, how do you think of the expense structure going forward? And does it get leaner than what it is given, obviously, the balancing act of marketing investment driving customer growth and transaction, but also the expense structure internally? And then, Jane, you just announced the hiring of Mary Beth on the Chief Merchant side. What do you see that opportunity in enhancing the merchandise assortment, whether through The Children’s Place brand or the other brands?
Jane Elfers: Sure. Mary Beth is a very seasoned merchant and has worked in a lot of different channels in a lot of different businesses. And so she’s only been here a couple of weeks, but she has immediately hit the ground running, which is not surprising, as I had mentioned in the press release. I’ve worked with Mary Beth in the past so I think she’s going to bring a level of discipline and a level of urgency around the opportunities in the brands, and to your point, not just TCP, but how do we continue to get the momentum going in Gymboree, how do we break through on Sugar & Jade and really make that business more important as we look to 2024 and beyond. And like I said, she’s worked on a lot of different businesses. So I think that she can look across the brands and think about incrementality.
I think what it also does is it really frees Meagan up to really focus her energies on marketing and on our wholesale business directly mostly from Amazon. So having Meagan be able to spend a lot more focused time on growing the Amazon business and the potential offshoots of that Amazon business, be it international or what have you, and then also to see what Meagan and her team have been able to do on the marketing front, it’s just absolutely incredible when you think about where we were prepandemic and where we are now. And you look at just things like our digital business comping positive in June and July and double-digit traffic increases. We haven’t heard a lot of reports so far, but from the ones we have, we are certainly a significant outlier in how strong our digital results are.
And obviously, that’s where our eggs are in the basket and continue to move on that. So I think that, that will really free Meagan up for that as well. And the rest of it, I’ll turn it over to Sheamus.
Sheamus Toal: Yes. So in terms of the first part of your question, as far as our digital acceleration, we do see the opportunity to have a permanent reduction in our expense structure. As I commented and Jane commented in our prepared remarks, in terms of operating efficiencies, we believe that the digital acceleration will enable us to obviously, as we commented, have less stores, less inventory, less people, less expense, less debt, less interest as a result of that debt. So there’s a whole host of efficiencies. On the expense side, we’ve obviously executed a number of initiatives this year, which are reducing expenses. We’ve commented in our guidance in terms of expectations for expense reductions relative to last year. And those are not a onetime thing that are temporary benefits.
