And that means just a more structured marketing investment, a more targeted marketing investment. So I think there’s significant reasons to be careful that when we develop the new products that you’ve referenced and others. We have lots more in the pipeline that we can market them to the right audience in an effective way. You have a real eagle eye for spotting what’s going on in stores, because we have Adore Me in just five stores out of 850. We have about three cabinets in those stores as the owner of the Adore Me brand and we’re very, very proud to be the owner of that brand. It’s important that we test every aspect of how the consumer responds to the brand. The brand is in growth. It grew in the fourth quarter, it grew in the full year.
It’s well positioned for 2024. They’re in peak marketing right now, building their file for the balance of year, both across Adore Me and Daily Look. And Adore Me continues to expand into new channels of distribution through wholesale and license and so on. And they’re doing really, really cool work. I don’t know if you saw their fashion show, which was a great success, embracing inclusivity and diversity. It was the only fashion show event in New York Fashion Week that had shoppable online content. So, we’re doing some really cool stuff supported by Gen.AI in that brand. Being part of our stores business is not the main thing at all. That is a digital business. But as the owner of the business, it makes sense that we test every possible way in which our customer will interact with it.
So we don’t expect to see an enormous amount more of Adore Me in stores, but do expect us to continue to mine for opportunity to work that brand as hard as we possibly can and to embrace it as part of our family and friends going forward.
Marni Shapiro: Great. Ans can I ask one more follow-up on bras? There is a broad trend bubbling up that bras are actually coming back in style. Push-up bras are actually coming back in style, not the way they were back in the day. But what could this mean for your brand? Because it feels like if this trend continues to bubble up, it could be pretty significant for you guys, because bras have been out of style for a couple of years now.
Martin Waters: Yes. I mean, look, if you think about what the different trends of bras have been over the years, the one that we would like to come back the most and the strongest would be the push-up bra because we dominate that part of the market. Our share in push-up is significantly higher than it is in online or in sport or in any other aspect of bras. So yes, that would be great. I don’t see that as a structural change right now in the data that I’m looking at. But from your lips to God’s ears, if that is a trend, we’ll be very, very well positioned to take advantage of it, Marni.
Marni Shapiro: Okay, great. Thanks, guys.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question now is from [Warren Chang] (ph) with Evercore ISI. Sir, your line is open.
Unidentified Analyst: Hey, good morning. I was wondering if you guys could walk us through the shaping of the gross margin through the year a little bit in a little more detail. It sounds like leverage picks up a little bit in the second half. I think you said promotions will be higher in the first quarter. I know there’s some moving pieces with cost savings, but maybe if you can contextualize for us the drivers this year and any call-outs on shaping.
Tim Johnson: Yeah, Warren, this is TJ. I’ll do my best there. So I think at a very high level, we would expect the margin rate to be up for the year, largely driven by the cost of goods sold initiatives that we have in place as part of the Transform the Foundation. Additionally, here in the early part of the year, we continue to see favorability from a transportation standpoint. So transportation rates that are embedded in our inventory are lower year-over-year, so that’s a net positive. On the flip side, as Martin mentioned, we are seeing slightly more promotional activity here in the front part of the year. So those are the key elements from a margin perspective. And then the last one would be B&O deleveraged, which is really going to follow sales.
So if you think about how we just talked about the sales trend or what the embedded sales trend is for the year, I would expect us to have cost of goods sold initiative benefit throughout the majority of the year, especially the first three quarters. When we get to the fourth quarter, we start to anniversary what just happened in this most recent fourth quarter. So it’s more present in the first three quarters of the year. The transportation opportunity, we still think, is available to us in first quarter and potentially second. We don’t necessarily have a crystal ball in where transportation rates will go in the back half of the year. So that benefit likely impacts spring in a positive way. From a promotional standpoint, Martin mentioned, we do expect to be a little more promotional than last year, here in the first quarter.
As we move through the year, if our assumptions are correct, and the intimates market stabilizes, hopefully that promotional need abates a little bit. And then as I mentioned, B&O will track where sales are going and what sales trends look like. So down mid-single digits here in the first quarter, down low single for the year, or slightly better as we move through Q2, Q3, and Q4. So that’s kind of how I would think about the key drivers. I do think there’s an opportunity for the margin rate just in total, obviously, to be up in the first quarter and potentially up in the second and third. We had a very strong gross margin performance in the fourth quarter that we just came across. So I think anniversarying that might be a little bit more challenging, but we’ll see what we can do when we get there.
