Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Kate McShane - Citi Investment Research.
Kate McShane - Citi Investment Research.
I was wondering if you could breakdown how much of your gross margin improvement was during the quarter from mix and how much was from the new retail doors you opened?
Bob Shearer
In the quarter, the second quarter you asked about, right.
Kate McShane - Citi Investment Research.
Yes, please.
Bob Shearer
There was about a 40 basis points improvement from retail.
Kate McShane - Citi Investment Research.
Although sales were a bit weaker than we were expecting margins were much better than we were expecting so can you quantify how much cost saving contributed to margins this quarter and how should we think about the impact of cost savings for the rest of the year.
Bob Shearer
Yes, as we said earlier in the year, related to the $100 million, first of all we are still on track to achieving that and as we said and as we were achieving and as we get throughout the year we’re seeing that we’re on track, not only for $100 million, but also to see that relatively evenly split over the four quarters.
So, in the first half you got about half of that. Second half we expect to get to about half of it and again on a quarter-to-quarter basis it’s pretty evenly split. So, that’s been a significant factor. Things like, things like the pension, the increase in the pension expense, stand out obviously a little bit more in the second quarter than they do other quarters because it’s just a smaller quarter.
Kate McShane - Citi Investment Research
Any opportunities potentially find more cost savings in the second half?
Bob Shearer
Again, we always have opportunities to reduce our costs. I know that many companies might say the first places they’re going to go is in the advertising expense area, but that’s not where we look. We’re looking other spots. So yes, we could reduce our expenses, but we’re working hard to protect the advertising spend.
Operator
Your next question comes from Bob Drbul - Barclays Capital.
Bob Drbul - Barclays Capital
Eric, I just got on just like one big picture question and I have a couple of sort of finer tuned questions. First, in the press release and when you talked about a little bit, you talked about some signs of stabilization. When you look at it from the portfolio of the total business globally, can you maybe just give us one or two of your biggest stabilization data points that gives you the most encouragement as you look to the back half of this year?
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