Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Your first question comes from Jill Caruthers – Johnson Rice.
Jill Caruthers – Johnson Rice
Wondering if you could talk about, you mentioned there was some significant changes in the non-athletic women’s merchant team. Maybe if you could talk about some lead time for when we see these new buys come in the store and just a little bit more on that.
Cliff Sifford
We began to make changes in that team actually at the end of 07 when we moved one of our buyers out of that team and into the allocation team, a merchandise manager. We then made a reassignment of a divisional within our organization into the women’s buying responsibility and we hired a divisional from outside the company. So I think you’re going to see the results of some of those changes as early as fall with the new fall product and then the rest as we move into fourth quarter.
Jill Caruthers – Johnson Rice
I guess the expense control is the very pleasantly surprised to see that you kept the dollar amount flat, I know in the last conference call you kind of guided to you were expecting to have expenses grow less than 3.5%. I mean have you ratcheted that down for the year now given the results in the first quarter?
Kerry Jackson
Yes we have. We’ve had a significant savings in first quarter keeping our expenses flat. Now we don’t expect that our expenses be flat in second quarter or third or fourth in actuality. But we should do better than the 3.5% we originally projected.
Jill Caruthers – Johnson Rice
Was there any onetime benefits or anything in the first quarter?
Kerry Jackson
No, it was just hard to earn expense controls.
Jill Caruthers – Johnson Rice
The re-analyzing you’re doing on the store front with the mic person’s role and whatnot, any type of guidance on when the timing of these changes will happen or are you still pretty much in the process and this is more of an 09 implementation?
Mark Lemond
We are in the throes of deciding a number of different changes right now. I want to be first to say that we don’t expect any of these changes that we’re talking about, whether from a visual standpoint, from any of the design elements to the way the mic person operates to be any dramatic change.
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