Zumiez Inc. (NASDAQ:ZUMZ) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Rick Brooks: 30% at the end of the year, Mitch, to give you a sense of where we’re at on the footwear inventory. We have aggressively been aggressive about clearing it out. And again, great support from our brand partners in helping us do that. And we’ve done it also through liquidation. So what you’re really seeing over the last month is aggressive liquidation in the footwear market. Now as we look forward, we definitely have some trends that are working, and I’m sure you’re identifying them on our footwear wall. And so now it’s about the right levels of inventory. It’s about, we’re going to ride the trends that we know are working that really actually go together with the trends that are in our private label business, particularly in long bottoms.

They’re going to drive, I think, some — that will drive improved business in footwear. And then what our teams have done is we have basically, if you were to see our plan for footwear throughout 2024, I think we have a really solid plan for injecting newness throughout the year on a pretty regular basis, period by period, we’re going to see us launch newness and build as we move — really try to build and adjust as we move towards back-to-school and holiday with what works in the assortment and how we reposition our footwear wall to really hit those peak periods as best we can. So I think the key takeaway off it is yes, it was, but it was promotionally-driven liquidation mode, I would say. But as we look forward, we now have inventory in a position where we can really go out and make investments and really try, as you know, footwear is top because of the size, the sizing, you do have to be larger investments in each style of footwear you try.

So what we’re going to do now is just go out there and have some fun. We’re going to play our brand partners, again, are being incredibly supportive here, and we have a lot of newness coming every period in footwear.

Mitch Kummetz: I look for being size 14 in your stores. I appreciate you taking all my questions.

Rick Brooks: Well, not that much new, Mitch.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] That concludes the question-and-answer session. At this time, I would like to turn the call back to Rick Brooks for closing remarks.

Rick Brooks: All right. Thank you, everyone, again. We always appreciate your support of Zumiez greatly and again to our employees and all of our brand partners. We really, again, as I said in the commentary earlier, we really appreciate the challenging year we all worked through and we’re looking forward to, hopefully, a better and improved 2024. So thank you, everyone, and we look forward to talking to you after first quarter results.

Operator: Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.