Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Richard Jaffe - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.
Richard Jaffe - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.
A couple of questions, you mentioned not anniversarying certain sales early in your presentation. I was wondering what the sales were? And, then if you could perhaps provide some color on April obviously with the calendar shift April is favorably distorted by the Easter shift and I wonder if you keep the Easter issue out of April? Also, if we could get some detail as to restructuring charges for the balance of the year, what you think they'll be and how you think they'll fall over the next three quarters? And lastly, what is your optimism given the results at J. Jill?
Trudy F. Sullivan
I'm sorry Richard we can't write down these seven questions fast enough. What was that last one?
Richard Jaffe - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.
The source of your optimism at J. Jill?
Trudy F. Sullivan
Let's start with the sales issue. Because our inventories were in really good shape in first quarter, we didn't really have to take the kind of aggressive markdowns cadence that the brand experienced the last year cleaning up from the semi-annual sales. So we were able to, as I said in my opening remarks, sell through our markdowns at a significantly improved AUR to the prior period and still get a very acceptable rate of sale on it. So that's what I was referring to in terms of we did not get aggressive going to second and third markdowns in the first quarter and so were able to liquidate clearance as well. In terms of April, really I would say that two things drove our April and it's not so much related to the Easter shift as it is we had a good delivery in April. The consumer liked what we put on the floor especially in our casual assortment and that has been a weak part of assortment in the prior period. We also had I believe a very well executed best customer event, the best customer event we've really had I think in the recent history of the brand and that really was helpful in driving April.
The sense of optimism on J. Jill, we certainly saw the J. Jill performance start to improve as we proceeded through the quarter. April was better than the prior two months and Paula has really corralled her team. With Paula's blessing they've adopted the Talbots inventory management model; we're starting to see some positive results there. We're very encouraged by the new creative that is coming out of this team. We're about to get into the period where this creative team product is actually hitting the floor as we get into July, and we've always believed that this brand is a great complement to our Talbots brand and we still believe that. We had talked about, in our strategic investor presentation, that one of the issues we were dealing with in the J. Jill brand was the lack of awareness and a base of stores that we were going to go back and do some testing to see if we could stimulate store traffic through the use of our catalog and it's very early to gauge but the preliminary results of these tests are very encouraging. So that's why we're encouraged. And I'll pass this to Ed for the final question.
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