Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Robert Ohmes - Merrill Lynch.
Robert Ohmes - Merrill Lynch
Can you give us a view on how much Nike is increasing as a percent of the mix as you move through this year, so by the time you get to the end of this fiscal year, what do you think Nike will be as a percent of your sales year-over-year?
And then the second question is: Can you talk a little bit more about the weakness in the apparel business? I know you're bringing inventory levels down, but it seems like with the strength in the marquee footwear business that there would be some pull at some point, and if you could maybe go through the history, where you've seen there.
Alan Cohen
With regard to Nike and as a percentage of our business and how it's growing, Nike is just doing magnificent. I mean, they are really, I think, hitting on all cylinders in the U.S. We're very excited about what we've seen, the product we've seen and the product that we're seeing on a go forward basis. And this is especially true with regard to the Jordan brand. The Jordan brand is just really also doing a magnificent job for us.
We think that, when it's all said and done, our best estimate will be that our Nike business will probably increase a couple of percentage points as a percent of our total business for the year. And it's going to be at about 60%, maybe a point here or there, one way or the other.
The second quarter pertaining to apparel, weakness in apparel and what we intend to do, what we're trying to do in apparel is exactly what we're doing with regard to our footwear and doing very successfully with regard to our footwear and hopefully we can also get to the same place with apparel.
I think it's important to remember and we have realized this at The Finish Line, that we are first and foremost an athletic specialty and a sports style footwear retailer, so we never want to take our eye off of that fact. But we do think that we can sell apparel and maybe the best times for us in apparel are going to be opportunistically.
Right now we're struggling, and I think maybe it's something that's going on in most athletic specialty and maybe, to some extent, in apparel in general. It's really very difficult in athletic specialty in our stores. We're having difficulty finding something that we can - finding things that we can differentiate with in our stores and things that are compelling or relevant or important to our consumer.
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