With the supply chain improving, I think that gives us confidence for markdown rate improvement as well across all brands. Sheila?
Sheila Harrington: Thanks. On Free People, we have continued to grow and similar to Anthropologie have been able to retain our core customer and add new customers. And so I feel pretty confident that the brand is going to be able to continue to gain market share. It has an initiative to gain market share within the denim and fashion-structured bottom business, which I think we’re executing to at an accelerated level currently. And then we — I would be remiss not to mention FP Movement as part of the total Free People brand lifestyle. This is at early stages of the growth, but robustly comping and we’ve laid out our $1 billion marker for go forward.
Richard Hayne: Great. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Please standby for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Boss with JP Morgan. Your line is open.
Matthew Boss: Great. Thanks and congrats on a nice quarter.
Richard Hayne: Thank you.
Matthew Boss: So, Dick, on the continued sales momentum in August, any notable categories or areas of the product assortment to really call out, maybe between occasion wear and casual where we stand with those two curves? And then just given the number of moving parts, is there any way you could just lay out quarter-to-date comps by banner or where we stand today in August so far?
Richard Hayne: Sure. I’ll do the first part. But if you’d sort of tell me in your question, do you want a specific brand? Are you talking about the Urban brand or are you talking about in general?
Matthew Boss: The second part, if you could just lay out the three brands and where we stand…
Richard Hayne: No, the first part.
Matthew Boss: Quarter-to-date from a same-store sales. The first part, I think it would just be interesting in general, what you’re seeing between occasion wear, return to work relative to the more casual categories.
Richard Hayne: I got it. Well, when we look at the brands individually, the comps are very similar to what we experienced in Q2. Anthropologie is running just a tad ahead of where they — they’re Q2 comp came in. The Free People brand is essentially right on target to where they were in Q2, amazingly enough, because they were so elevated in Q2. And the Urban Outfitters brand, I’ve got to break down. Urban Outfitters in North America actually has seen benefits that Sheila discussed earlier, with comps in apparel getting better. However, Urban Outfitters in Europe has actually seen a decrease in comps and we attribute that to a very, very difficult environment. So we don’t expect that to get too much better anytime real soon. So if you add all those up, stir them up, it’s almost exactly where we were in Q2 within a couple of tens of basis points.
So I think we’re pretty confident that Q3 will look very similar to Q2. Now, I always have to talk about this by brand and I kind of hate to do that because the experts of the brand are sitting right next to me. But in Anthropologie, all of their categories performed very well, whether it was — it’s sort of what we usually talk about as their more polished look or whether it’s the more casual look or even the vacation look. All of them have done well. When I look at the shoe assortment, as an example, heels, flats, sneakers, they’re all — boots, they’re all doing well and they’re are all driving double-digit comps. So I think all look seem to be doing well and I can’t call out any one particular look as being overly strong. And I would say the same is true in Free People brand.
All of their product and product categories delivered significant double-digit comps. So I can’t really call out anything particular there. As Sheila did, their denim is performing quite well right now, but their knit tops are performing extremely well, as are sweaters. So I’m — it is really across the board. With Free People Movement, the casual is doing slightly better than the performance, but they’re both — I mean, after all, their comps are 57%, so you can just imagine they’re both incredibly strong.
Operator: Thank you. Please standby for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Marni Shapiro with The Retail Tracker. Your line is open.
Marni Shapiro: Hey, everybody. Congratulations on a great quarter and to the UO team for turning the corner there. Tricia, I wanted to dig — I wanted to dig in a little bit at Anthropologie because of the increased marketing spend there and the fact that my for you page has been flooded with that amazing Falling for Anthro and all the post, it’s amazing. So can you talk a little bit about it? Are you getting in — and it sounds like you’re getting a new younger customer. I’m curious if this customer is visiting more, are they spending about the same, because typically a younger customer might spend a little less. I’m also curious if the marketing push is global to put — raise brand awareness as you open more stores, are you looking to open more stores internationally? And then I just have one follow-up on Anthropologie.
Tricia Smith: Sure. Thank you, Marni. I’ll try to take them one at a time.
Richard Hayne: Marni, that’s quite a one…
Marni Shapiro: And I’m not usually like that, but this campaign is so good [Multiple Speakers] the Free People Runsie, which is flooding my for you page as well and Roche.
Richard Hayne: Okay.
Tricia Smith: No, we appreciate it. Yeah, our digital marketing team is really doing a fantastic job driving traffic with DTC and mid-double-digit traffic growth as far as high-single digit traffic. I think the — that coupled with the improvements in our site experience and service in our stores, we’re maintaining conversion, and so we’re getting some real benefit. And the additional marketing spend, thank you for noticing. We just launched yesterday, our Falling for Anthro global. It is a global campaign starring actress Phoebe Tonkin. And the campaign is one of our largest marketing campaigns to date and our creative assets starring Phoebe will be amplified in a full 360 strategy that’s inclusive of out-of-home advertising, billboards, Times Square in LA, Wildposting.
So, a big push for us and it’s one of our biggest. And it will also be our largest digital TV campaign to-date and really robust social media coverage, which is fun to see that you’re seeing, and in-store events and more. And I think that the campaign itself is really intended for us to be able to build both connectivity and loyal community and while reaching this kind of new eager and excited audience. Our new customer, I think, through this kind of new to next strategy that our team has deployed around engaging a second purchase out of our new customers are younger, they’re spending slightly less, but not as much less as I think you would think as our core customers. Really happy with the growth of our customer count, customer spend, and then our retained customer is spending more as well.
So I think the marketing content is resonating kind of across multiple age demographics, both are retained and our new customers, and we’re really, really pleased with the results.
Marni Shapiro: That’s amazing. And could I just follow up one quick one on Anthro because it sounds like the footwear is doing well. I’m curious if you see room to grow some of the other — some high-margin categories like accessories, jewelry and handbags? They’ve all looked very good in the store. I’m curious if you still see room for growth in those categories?
Tricia Smith: Yeah. Thank you. We have really had a concerted effort in growing the accessories category and shoes. We, particularly in stores, have been testing some distorted category expansions to be able to see what that can do has proven incredibly successful. In some cases, it’s driving a 1 basis point or 2 of comp for the entire box of the store with that expansion of accessories. So high margin in accessories, improving our total overall IMU as well as knit tops and a lot of high-margin kind of opening price point categories are allowing us, I think, to exceed our expectations on both customer acquisition as well as margin expansion. So we feel really good about it.
Operator: Thank you. Please standby for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Janet Kloppenburg (ph) with JJK Research Associates. Your line is open.
Janet Kloppenburg: Hi, can you hear me?
