Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Heather Boksen - Sidoti & Company.
Heather Boksen - Sidoti & Company
Greg, I know you don’t want to side for holiday revenues, but maybe you could talk about what parts of the business you think have the biggest opportunities this holiday season and what areas or what factors have you most concerned.
Greg A. Tunney
Sure. I would tell you this. Right now what we’re seeing at retail is that the replenishment business continues to trend very strong. As retail has gotten tough, the retailers do what they do best and that was cut back on their inventories. And I think they found themselves a little short on their seasonal purchases, so the only way for them to keep their shelves full is to take advantage of replenishment programs that we have. And so we have seen in the last 90 days our replenishment business has significant increases. And so right now as we are going into the season, we are looking at stronger margins than we had last year at this time. Right now everything’s on track. We have not seen any decline in our backorder position. In fact, it’s good. It’s up over last year.
And we feel pretty good going into the season. You know the only caveat I’ll put into that is we hope that we will have a normal, seasonal weather pattern for our product. You know we hope there’s no special tropical storms that make it unseasonably warm. But right now you know we’ve had no disruption in any type of shipments. Things are going as planned. And so we feel pretty bullish right now about what’s going on in the marketplace with our product, especially in the replenishment side of the business as well as going into the holiday season because we think the retailers are a little short on merchandise and we think that there’s some opportunities to maximize that.
Heather Boksen - Sidoti & Company
I know last year you benefited from gift purchases, you know shoppers trending to buying cheaper gifts. Any feedback from some of the guys who buy your product mostly for holiday as to how they’re planning what they think the consumer’s going to do this year?
Greg A. Tunney
Well we don’t think it’s a less inexpensive gift. We think it’s a more valued gift, Heather. You know right now I’ve been through this cycle a few times in the accessory world and at the end of the day when you look at that holiday business, it’s a gift-giving business. And every year for the last 60 plus years R.G. Barry for some reason Christmas always comes. And I think last year you’re right, we did benefit from people looking at more value oriented items. You know it wasn’t the year of the big screen TV and you know the big iPods and everything else. It was more value. And we think right now that quite frankly it’s a similar type of season. You know last year we had outstanding sell throughs in a pretty tough economic time. There’s nothing right now that shows us that that should change.
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