Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Deborah Weinswig – Citigroup.
Deborah Weinswig – Citigroup
So with regards to thinking about SG&A for you know 2010, what comps do you need to lever? Because I think you said at a 1% you’re still de-levering.
Howard R. Levine
Well I think when we look at leverage and then our comp that we’re looking for in fiscal 2010, I would say first of all we continue to be very pleased with our cost containment efforts and our efforts around expense management, around the core expenses. And that has allowed us to invest in sales driving initiatives. So we feel well positioned. A great example of that is the space realignment initiative that we tackled in the fourth quarter. So we feel very well positioned and I would say you know that we have plans for sales driving initiatives certainly during the year and you know we’ll continue to manage the core expenses well. So you know I think again we’re very pleased with managing the core expenses.
Deborah Weinswig - Citigroup
My follow up question which relates to kind of what you’re seeing with regards to traffic, it sounds like not only are you gaining a greater share of wallet from existing customers but also bringing in new customers. Can you talk about anything that you’re doing from a marketing side to drive that and is there anything that you can provide in terms of additional color in terms of you know what you are seeing with regards to the new customers who are coming into your stores? Thank you.
Howard R. Levine
Sure, Deb. As I had indicated in my comments we are seeing new customers or different customers coming into our stores. We’re referring to them as trade down customers, more middle income customers. You know I think we’ve been working on a number of things for the last several years to help position us to capture those customers. You know for example our concept renewal efforts have been critical in our efforts to drive better merchandise presentations and improved shopping conditions for both our core customer and the trade down customers. We’ve worked very hard on improving our merchandise quality and our offering in both apparel and other merchandise within our stores.
The fact that we can now take credit cards position us very nicely with that trade down customer. So we started working on a number of those things several years ago and think that we’re in good shape to continue to hopefully hold on to those customers while our core customer is struggling somewhat. But as the economy improves, we would expect the core customer to equally appreciate some of the changes we’ve made in our store.
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