Whether that’s a long-term permanent trend or just a short-term remains to be seen. We feel appropriately covered on both of those dimensions. As we talked about before, an important thing for the Victoria brand is that we don’t just show up as one way of being sexy, that we’re sexy on her terms. And that means that we embrace all aspects of a woman’s journey through life and provide better comfort and sport bras than anybody else in the market. So that’s how I would respond to the customer trends. TJ?
Tim Johnson: Yes. I think additionally, Matt, your question on February and early March. In the first quarter, what — the basis for our guidance was really based on early results here in the first five weeks of the quarter. And what we really saw was characteristics that were very similar to the fourth quarter. Put aside the extra week for a moment, the characteristics that were very similar to the fourth quarter on the top line, but we were getting there a little bit differently. So in the fourth quarter where traffic in our stores and mall traffic was much better than earlier in the year and conversion was a little bit lighter, we move into first quarter and really mall traffic and our store traffic is more challenged and it’s down to last year and conversion is relatively flat.
So it’s producing a similar outcome on the top line. Certain of the key metrics are behaving a little bit differently here in the early part of Q1 relative to holiday. Holiday is just a much different proposition for us and for our customers. The second part or maybe third part of your question around assumption on go forward. We did make an assumption that the intimates market would continue to be difficult in spring, we made an assumption that it would stabilize, not improve, but stabilize as we move into fall. So that’s a market assumption. Inside the box in terms of what we’re doing differently to try to get a different outcome. As we mentioned in earlier remarks, some of the new merchandising strategies that Greg spoke to at the Investor Day will be more in full flight in the fall season.
And that includes sport bras. As we’ve talked about on a number of occasions, the market is growing in sport, and we’re under-penetrated. The market for sport, as it relates to overall bras, is in the range of about 30%, and it’s not 30% in our stores. So as we move towards a similar market representation of product and go after the sport business, we think that ought to help in the intimates category as well. And that’s, again, newness in the back half of the year. So there are things we’re doing that hopefully change the trend in the intimates performance. And we are assuming, at some point, a stabilization. And we picked fall for that stabilization in our guidance assumptions. So when you work through the overall model what you kind of get from a top line perspective, you got down mid singles here in the first quarter and you’ve got down low singles for the year.
So it’s not as if we have a significant hockey stick, but we are assuming some level of stabilization in the back half of the year.
Matthew Boss: Great color. Best of luck.
Martin Waters: Thanks.
Operator: Thank you. Now our next question is from Marni Shapiro with Retail Tracker. And your line is open, ma’am.
Marni Shapiro: Hey, everybody. Just touching on this whole sales notion, because it sounds like the goal here for 2024 is to drive sales. Martin, could you touch on a little bit some of the new products like Fun and Flirty, like Wink, like Body by Victoria? I know they are newer this year, but are they driving traffic to the stores, and are they driving sales? And it sounds a little bit like even as some of the new stuff is selling, it’s not driving the rest of the store. Do we hear that right? And then I noticed in a couple of stores that you have a Adore Me in the Victoria’s Secret stores. Could you talk a little bit about the strategy there as well?
Martin Waters: Hi, Marnie. Thank you for the question and thank you for noticing the newness that there is in store. You know, when our brand is at our best we have abundant newness. We have newness across every category. That’s what drives the business. And so, over the last few years, we’ve been putting in place an innovation pipeline to get back to having multiple bra launches per year. BBV bra launch was probably the most important, because it’s our biggest bra franchise and it was overdue and overhaul. All of our bra franchises need an overhaul. We have to be continually renewing and refreshing. The good news is, and you hinted at it, that when we do that the customer notices. So BBV, biggest and best launch we’ve had in over four years.
The Wink bra customers notice immediate impact. The PINK seamless there, notice. The featherweight max sports bra, notice. So yes, the customer finds the new product and appreciates the new product, and our store’s feedback channel tells us straight away when she sees it. The challenge is we’ve got to get more people into the franchise overall. So that means more relevant marketing. It means targeting our spend to get new people into the file. And the good news for us is one of the key ways that we have to do that is the loyalty program. Our loyalty program is now up to 26 million people — over 26 million people. That enables us to be much more surgical in the way that we target so that we can point the appropriate products at the appropriate people.
