Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question is from the line of Jeff Klinefelter with Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead.
Jeffrey Klinefelter - Piper Jaffray
Yes, just a couple questions for you. First of all at top of mind for everyone right now is the rebate checks and their potential impact on business and well difficult for anyone to tell in their sales results so far; could you discuss if you are picking up on any trends yet that would point to the rebate checks having an effect; anything you are doing to capitalize from a marketing to drive store traffic in from a local marketing perspective and all to capture those as well?
Edward Anderson
Okay. Thanks for the question Jeff. Regarding this issue of the tax incentives which I believe began being sent out to people about 2 to 2.5 weeks ago. We have begun to hear from our store managers, district managers, regional that people are beginning to get the tax checks, not in huge amounts, but in some amounts, but we have yet to be able to see any real change in our business that we could suggest was a result of the tax checks to this point. I’ll point out to you that our sales were 4.5% through the month of April and for the first couple of weeks into May, we’re running 4% up. We have to see any real impact from the checks. Even though, we expect it to be some positive impact, it’s really hard to have any determination of what that impact might be. As far as doing a special marketing to drive customers into our stores as you know we spend very little on advertising and really allow our merchandizing to do the marketing for us and so we have really not done any special marketing for this event.
Jeffrey Klinefelter - Piper Jaffray
Okay. A couple of other questions; one on expenses and payroll cost at your stores; are you seeing any sort of pressure there? Are you expecting any pressure or anything to accelerate as you go through the balance of the year?
Bruce Smith
Well, nothing of any great substance during the first quarter in addition to just a lack of leverage from flat comp store sales. When we look back at the components for the quarter, of the 60 basis points, 10 basis points effort was direct store payroll. Another 20 basis points was in what we call the store operations group, which includes district managers, regional managers and a few people at corporate and the 20 basis points there was more related to the fact that we did reduce the span of control that our district managers have. We reduced the number of stores that they supervise and so that caused a little bit to of the de-leverage that we had and then the rest of it was -- the other 30 basis points or so was related primarily to the benefits including a higher bonus accrual in the first quarter of this year than last year, because last year’s was unusually low -- significantly missed a budget at that point in time.
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