Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Rick Nelson - Stephens, Inc.
N. Richard Nelson-Stephens, Inc.
Can you discuss, Steve, the merchandise as in a category where you’re seeing some relative strength and the weaker categories as well, what’s working, what’s not working.
Steven Miller
Certainly the winter products categories was arguably our strongest performing category for the first quarter, but we had other specific areas of strength that I think for competitor reasons we’d just as soon not discuss certain categories.
I think softness for the first quarter, obviously we talked about the roller shoe category, golf business remains somewhat in the doldrums, our baseball business was relatively soft and then some what disappointing to us. We think given the challenging economy, arguably there perhaps is no category that we carry that there’s more hand-me-down products in folk’s closets than baseball. It seemed like this year that people perhaps were not replacing the equipment for the same reasons they had in the past.
N. Richard Nelson-Stephens, Inc.
What’s happening in Footwear X or the Heelys?
Steven Miller
I think our general footwear and non-wear related apparel product was relatively soft, reflecting the weak economy environment.
N. Richard Nelson-Stephens, Inc.
Will you be getting the UA cross trainer in your stores and if so how many stores and what impact might that have?
Steven Miller
We will be getting the product, it will be in roughly half of our stores and we certainly look at it as hopefully a positive.
N. Richard Nelson-Stephens, Inc.
How about the promotional environment, did that intensify from your competitors from fourth quarter to first and what is your expectation there and what plan do you have for advertising?
Steven Miller
I think it’s always relative. I think we always see more competition or everybody being more aggressive in the fourth quarter than the first. I don’t think that currently in the first quarter we really saw what I call more activity in the sense of greater frequency of competitor’s ads. I think in some cases we perhaps see more aggressive pricing, possibly competitor’s efforts to address their inventory issues.
N. Richard Nelson-Stephens, Inc.
How about regional areas of strength, is California softer than your other operating regions? Texas for example, what you hear is actually pretty healthy right now, is that the case at Big 5?
Steven Miller
Rick we’re not going to talk about specific areas and a very specific sense of store performance. What I will say is that generally sales have been recently challenging in most of the markets. I think initially as we start to see softness creep into our business it was something that we can more directly correlate to the housing issues, the areas that have generally been spoken of as having higher foreclosure and default areas.
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