Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Robert Drbul – Barclays Capital
Robert Drbul – Barclays Capital
On the sales plan and the sales trend, can you guys talk a little bit more about back to school so far what you’re seeing and I guess just a little bit more, you guys are always impacted by the tax free holiday so if you could talk about what you’ve seen so far and if the impacts have been above or below what you thought it would be.
Andy Hall
We’ll be a lot smarter on Monday. We have the Texas tax free is Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of this week and obviously that’s still a significant piece of the August business for us. I think that the environment out there we really can’t talk too much about sales but the environment out there is still one, it’s a recessionary environment. Anecdotally what I hear from others is that back to school continues to be a buy now, wear now, getting later in the season event that continues to trend over the last four or five years that back to school as been later and later as we go along.
Robert Drbul – Barclays Capital
On the Goody’s announcement and the Goody’s name, can you talk about in terms of you say an additional 30 to 35 do you think that can be a larger number? How did you come up with that number in addition to what you’ve already done? Have you given any thought to maybe renaming some of the existing stores that you have, if you think the Goody’s name is that good?
Andy Hall
We had a list of the former Goody’s locations in non-competitive markets where we were not in those markets. The reason we weren’t in those markets because they were already there. That list totaled about 50 stores. When you look at that total list of markets that were attractive to us we’re going to go into about 15 of those markets this year and that leaves 30 to 35 of those markets for future opportunities.
As far as changing an existing name to Goody’s I don’t see that on the radar screen. I think the benefit we’re seeing in these new stores, the three new stores that we opened August 6th really kind of played out as we thought that it would. Those customers knew the Goody’s name, when we opened back up as Goody’s they came into the store, they liked what they saw, obviously it was different format then what Goody’s was running, the products are a little more upscale.
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