Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Our first question is from Paul Lejuez – Credit Suisse.
Paul Lejuez - Credit Suisse
Thinking ahead a bit, because you guys are such a fourth quarter story, this fourth quarter you invested big in inventory and marketing, especially on the Victoria's Secret side and we saw the results. I'm just wondering, what do you do in '07 for an encore to drive the fourth quarter comp? I would think more inventory and marketing is not the answer.
Tom Katzenmeyer
Paul, do you want us to keep that to a comment about Victoria's Secret?
Paul Lejuez - Credit Suisse
If each could comment that would be great, but Victoria's Secret was the main focus.
Tom Katzenmeyer
We'll start with Sharen then. Thank you.
Sharen Turney
Although we talked about 10% increases, which we are very excited about, I think there's still plenty of room in the fourth quarter for next year, especially in the first three weeks prior to December. When you think about the inventory investment we do not have to reinvest that. In fact, we are being able to identify where we can actually smooth that investment out. We also think there are categories that we still have not gotten to the market share that we would like to in terms of, for an example, sleepwear that we think is a big opportunity for us as we are thinking about that time frame.
So in terms of looking at that time fourth quarter where we see the biggest growth opportunity lies right smack in the middle of the biggest traffic time which is the first three weeks before Christmas.
Tom Katzenmeyer
Neil, comment about Bath & Body Works.
Neil Fiske
Similar theme for us. Really the way that we look at the opportunity for growth next year is in the time staging and the segmentation of holiday time periods. So last year we set out to improve our holiday 1 theme with our Happy Fallidays theme and have a better transition which was very successful. Holiday 2 was strong for us, and holiday 3 was relatively weak. So we see that there is clear opportunity for us to grow our holiday 3 sales by strategizing that time period differently and distinctly as we did in 2006 with holiday 1 and holiday 2. We have got some surprises in store for next year's holiday 3.
Tom Katzenmeyer
Thanks, Neil. Jay, if we can go out to you for similar comment about apparel.
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