Jodi Taylor, CFO, The Container Store
Right. I think part of the answer for you, John, this is Jodi, is that as you said, and there really was not any measurable benefit to the gross margin in the third quarter. The benefit would be — we are expecting it to be relatively minimal into the fourth quarter and that is all been incorporated into our guidance. Remember that we do turn currently our elfa inventory at The Container Store about four times a year, and we use an average cost inventory system. We had really procured the vast majority of our elfa inventory for this year’s sale by the time the new surge in the dollar had occurred. The benefit to that is really more of a future discussion. Of course, while on the whole for us, the impact of a rising dollar is a good thing for us. Historically you’ve got to offset there to the elfa P&L that occurs, but net-net the impact on gross margin is greater than that.
John Heinbockel, Guggenheim Securities
It is a next year benefit. Would I be crazy if I think about where the krona is now that that benefit would clearly be in excess of 50 basis points once it’s incorporated into your P&L?
Jodi Taylor, CFO, The Container Store
We will make sure when we give guidance in April for fiscal 2015 we will have obviously more information at that point on where the [SCK – 00:30:26] has trended. As I said, it’s a good thing for The Container Store absolutely on a net basis to have the dollar go up, but I can’t quantify that yet at this early juncture.
John Heinbockel, Guggenheim Securities
Okay, thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Matt Nemer with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead with your question.
Matt Nemer, Wells Fargo
Happy new year, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. First on the quarter to date trend, you mentioned it was driven by both traffic and ticket. I just want to clarify, is traffic a positive territory right now, and do you think that it could be up for the fourth quarter?
Jodi Taylor, CFO, The Container Store
Matt, this is Jodi, and the answer is. yes. Traffic is in positive territory for the fourth quarter to date. We are seeing that 2.7% increase that we indicated coming both from a mix of traffic and ticket, which we are pleased with. As far as predicting the breakdown for the quarter, we really don’t want to get that granular. You did see our guidance was for low mid single digits for the quarter though.
Matt Nemer, Wells Fargo
Okay. Then secondly, you mentioned in your gross margin discussion that there was an impact from the elfa sales mix. I just wanted to see if we could get some more color on that.
Jodi Taylor, CFO, The Container Store
Sure. As far as at elfa, you will recall that they have — first of all, they do business in about 30 countries with a lot of different accounts. They also have different product – two main product lines that have different margin components to them. One being the products like we sell here at The Container Store and then also they have sliding doors. The mix of sales between countries and product lines can lead to slightly different gross margin results for them between periods, and this was the primary contributor to the year-over-year decline at elfa.
Matt Nemer, Wells Fargo
Okay. It was a mix into sliding doors or away from and then any specific countries?
Jodi Taylor, CFO, The Container Store
I don’t have any specific countries necessarily to call out but the mix is going, like you say, between sliding doors and the interior products, as we call them the steel products. Sliding doors generally tend to have a higher gross margin for them, so yes, between sliding doors and steel.