Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions)Mr. Shanley from Susquehanna Financial Group. Please go ahead with your questions.
John Shanley – Susquehanna Financial Group
Thank you and good morning. Joe, I wonder if you can give us some details in terms of the poor traffic levels that you mentioned. Did the store traffic decline pretty much in sync with the sales decline particularly in the backend of the quarter? And, have those traffic levels improved to any degree since we note that some of the recent business in your stores that you’re running BOGOs and it seems to be a lot more promotional here in November than it had been earlier in the quarter. Is the traffic level coming back to any degree?
Joseph W. Wood
I think there were several questions in there John so let me see if I can answer them. You know, during back to school traffic was okay really in August, I mean it was down a little bit but, August was a fairly decent month. And, where traffic really declined, John in all three channels was obviously, in September and then October was very poor. What we did see come back and traffic continued to decline in September into October. Now, we have seen traffic come back slightly, its still in the negative, in November so, we’re still experiencing a customer decline especially as we look at the first couple of weeks. Again, not as sever as November. Promotionally, John, the only think we did is we usually start our promotions mid November. We moved them up by two weeks, it made sense to do so. We received favorable comments and sales results from that but, we really haven’t gotten any more aggressive with our promotions other than as far as two weeks earlier in November.
John Shanley – Susquehanna Financial Group
You don’t remember Joe whether last year you did the promotion across all product categories as it seems to be going now, was that the case last year as well?
Joseph W. Wood
Yes, it was John.
John Shanley – Susquehanna Financial Group
I have one quick question. The expectation that the private label business is going to return to a sales increase next year, is that based on actual orders that you’ve booked and have you been able to fill the gap based on the loss of some of that Payless business with other value channels?
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