Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question will be coming from the line of Paul Lejuez with Credit Suisse.
Paul Lejuez - Credit Suisse
Thanks, guys. Can you talk a little bit more about the economics of the Middle East arrangement? Also wondering if you will have to alter the product at all or if you will be selling the same merchandise? And then just wondering if you are looking at other countries to expand into. Thanks.
James V. O'Donnell
I am not at liberty to speak to the details of our agreement with Alshaya but as far as the mechanics of the assortments, there will be very little tweaking of the assortments. The climatic conditions aside pretty much call for our standard assortment. The only things we’ll be looking at, are there any idiosyncrasies within the marketplace that should be addressed within our assortments. We won’t be doing anything special for them. There might be some distortions as to increasing certain categories and maybe reducing other categories but other than that, we expect it to be very seamless.
As far as looking at other countries the answer is yes, we are but we are going to take it a step at a time and right now, this is the very first step in the journey and we’ve decided to go with the Alshaya group as our partner in the Middle East with the potential of moving into other areas of the world where they also have a network.
Paul Lejuez - Credit Suisse
Great, thanks. Good luck.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of John [Morris] of BMO Capital Markets.
John Morris - BMO Capital Markets
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Two questions -- one for Joan on the SG&A. I think the expense controls came in a little bit better than we thought, so good job there. And you did comment about the expectations in Q2. Would you see dollars still down in Q2 on SG&A? Is that still a possibility? And then I think more broadly, looking at the opportunity for back-to-school, from a merchandising assortment perspective, where do you see the opportunities for back-to-school this year compared to last year? Thanks.
Joan Hilson
So real quick on the SG&A, John, in the second quarter we would not expect the SG&A dollars to be down. In fact, we would expect them to be up slightly but for the first half of the year, we would expect SG&A to be down.
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