Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first questions comes from the line of Jeff Van Sinderen of B.Riley.
Jeff Van Sinderen-B. Riley & Company, Inc.
Good morning. So, looking at your business, your comps have been running negative for some time and I guess my question is, what needs to happen for that to turn around; how much is a function of mall traffic, or increased popularity of athletic styles of other styles that you carry or changes to your footwear or apparel assortment and is there anything out there that’s happening that makes you think that those changes could drive positive comps in the foreseeable future?
Alan Cohen
Yes, Jeff, there is a lot in that question and we’re going to try to address it all, I’ll start. You know, I think first and foremost we all have to be very cognizant and we are and I just mentioned it briefly in my opening comments of the environment that we’re in from a retail perspective and certainly what’s going on in the economy and I think, with the consumer; I think it would be naïve to not keep that in mind and we certainly are. But, I think mall traffic, again, is something that’s not been good; with regard to our stores, mall traffic has been down. We do monitor about half of our stores and it’s very difficult, we don’t get direct information from the malls any more as to their mall traffic, but there are some organizations that monitor mall traffic and I think mall traffic in general has also been down to some extent. But, you know I feel very good about the product and I feel good about a lot of the things we’ve been doing, that we’ve really been doing over the last year or so and I continue to see momentum. As I mentioned, I feel that our product offerings and our product presentation and the marketing in our stores is as good as it’s been for the last several year. We’re seeing some very, very positive trends in key categories and areas; the women’s business has turned positive and that’s very important, that’s something that has been negative for the last couple of years. Also, in the men’s business, we’re seeing strength in basketball, certainly led by Jordan, not necessarily what we would call all performance basketball, but the basketball category, especially Jordan, is really performing well and of course tech running, both men and women and we and our team of merchants have done a really fantastic job of really diving into the tech area in particular, the tech running are with a lot of the different brands and certainly all the important brands. We are seeing good trends in our direct to consumer business, the e-commerce end of our business. We continue to have double digit growth in traffic and sales and this, I think, is certainly a trend that’s going on in general out there with the consumer, they’re shopping more on line and we feel that we have the ability to capture our share of the market in this particular business. So, I guess the bottom line is, do I think that we can turn this business around; do I think that we can make sales go positive, because we have been negative for a couple years? I think we can. I’m not looking and I would not sit here today and say there’s going to be a monumental shift, but if we can take sales from a negative 4.5% in Finish Line and -6 as a consolidate company back to flat in ’09 or maybe even a little bit positive, I think that I would be pretty happy with that in view of what we’re facing, the head winds and the economy and also I think it ?s very critical and hopefully everyone’s listening and hearing what I’m saying, I do think we’re going to have better product margins; that is a focus of this company in ’09. We really feel that we can improve our product margins, we think we can do it with less inventory and quicker turns and all those things are very positive on a go forward basis.
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