Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from John Zolidis - Buckingham Research.
John Zolidis - Buckingham Research
I have two questions. The first one, you laid out at the beginning of the call the four strategic actions that you embarked upon at the beginning of the year and certainly in retrospect or in hindsight, those appear to have been very prudent decisions.
I was wondering is there a part two to this strategic approach to running the business? In other words, now that we’ve accomplished a number of the things that you laid out at that time, what’s the next step to improving profitability of the business and really streamlining things going forward? Thanks.
Chuck Crovitz
I think that we’re going to continue with these strategies that we’ve laid out, because I don’t think we’ve finished with them.
Certainly, the inventory levels, we’re going to have to keep pressure on in this economic environment and I think that in terms of the cost structure, we’ve begun that and we definitely instilled in the culture, but we have to continue to drive these costs out of the company and we are going to continue to support the business through growth in our stores and our eCom growth.
So I do think that the strategies that we’ve laid out are going to continue here for the foreseeable future, as we begin to recover out of this economy.
John Zolidis - Buckingham Research
And my second question, thank you for sharing that data on the kids business with the unit sales up 3%, average unit retail down 4%. Can you remind us of the demographic data that may be supporting increases in unit sales for children? I believe in the past, the company had shared some demographic data. Is there any update on what’s going on with the number of kids out there and so on?
Chuck Crovitz
Yes, in terms of the demographics, they are very favorable for our business. I think we’re now in a new baby boom, which we’ve had a number of births this last year, actually exceeded the number of births in the ?50s and we see just dramatic growth in the children’s population that are in our core markets. So from a demographic standpoint, I think we’re doing quite well.
We also see faster growth of minority populations in the economy and we perform very well with those groups as well. So from a demographic standpoint, I think things are moving towards us.
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