Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Jeff Stein – Soleil Securities
Jeff Stein – Soleil Securities
On your seasonal program for the back half of the year, trim a tree I know that’s a big program for you for Q4. The industry had a real tough time in that category last year. I’m wondering how you’re planning that from a merchandising standpoint. Are you planning that category down or just from an inventory dollar commitment standpoint?
Steve Fishman
It’s just slightly up and slightly above where we’re planning it. We think we deserve some businesses back from last year. We were off slightly last year as everybody was, not near what the rest of the industry was but we think we still have huge upsides. I talk about it briefly, the tree business has just been really good for us and we think we have an opportunity to grow that.
There’s a lot of new and exciting things going on in the light business and in fact if you’ve been in some stores we have a very, very early set for back to school and some of it revolves around some rope lighting and some LED lighting that’s new and different that’s going to be part of the Christmas strategy that we’ve had some real early success sales on. We’re real excited about that.
Frankly from our point of view the consumer can only go so long without wanting to get back and decorate their home. We’re real encouraged about what we think the upside opportunity. We certainly have an upside better then what we have planned too from an inventory perspective. We have not planned that inventory down.
Jeff Stein – Soleil Securities
I’m wondering how much did inbound freight boost the gross margin in the second quarter and will that mitigate as you start to anniversary lower fuel costs in the back half of the year?
Joe Cooper
We don’t specifically break down how much that contributed to the margin. We are planning, we generally anniversary that at the end of the third quarter, that’s when you’re talking about fuel costs, started to decline last year. We’ve got some other freight initiatives that have been going on particularly the re-bidding of the outbound freight that those benefits will start being realized by the company in the back half of this year. I think you were speaking about fuel but we also have some transportation initiatives that we’ve generated savings from.
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