Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. [Operator instruction] Our first question will come from the line Jeff Stein from KeyBanc Capital Markets, please proceed.
Jeffrey S. Stein - KeyBanc Capital Markets
Sure. Jim, first question, I’m wondering if you might expand on why you think you missed your revenue forecast in the floral category in Q4 and what measures you are taking to get back on track there?
James F. McCann
Jeff, a couple of things, the miss in Q4 on revenue is primarily in floral and was primarily rather than that the Mother’s Day period -- the last few days of the Mother’s day period and frankly it was aggressive marketing time by everyone in the category. There are lots of well-funded competitors who were very aggressive, and the mix of advertising vehicles we use particularly in the online world left us in a position where we had a continuing bets on categories that were under performing, like the portal growth, and we’re insufficiently betting on the categories that have emerged as the new leadership categories are the list programs, the search categories. And so from all point of few a combination of aggressive competition, deep discounting on pricing, we did not participate into the extend perhaps we should have, and misplaced resources in terms of under performing online vehicles versus the newer more recently emerged the news like the search and affiliate programs.
Jeffrey S. Stein - KeyBanc Capital Markets
We’ll, it seem that last year you were backing away from search because of the high cost and I’m wondering given the fact that those vehicles continue to seem to produce costumers. Are you prepared to move back into those, and how is that going to weigh against the cost reduction efforts that you are intending to initiate? In other words, nets, are you really going to be reducing your expenses if you have to invest more in search and affiliate advertising?
Christopher G. McCann
Jeff, this is Chris. As we look at you know, all our advertising specifically search. Searches continues to be a very expensive propagation as we mentioned in the past, it always spikes at holidays, there has been some more rationale pricing on search -- you know, most of the holiday season this year was -- it was aggressive -- holiday period. We do find it, however, to be effective. We do still find it to be effective in new customer acquisition as well. So you know, the overall -- I would say, yes we probably step up our aggressiveness more than -- Q4 anyway, and still working very well for us so we’ll step up our aggressiveness there. I’m not concerned that limiting our ability to reduce our operating cost, however, as the focus on operating cost reductions mainly into non-marketing areas, Jim gave you the examples that he did and again, utilizing the collection of assets that we acquired across our businesses we’re able to drive those operating cost reductions. At the same we will always stay focused on improving marketing efficiencies.
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