I can’t stand it anymore, so be warned. The next person who says to me, “We’re watching our inventory carefully” or “We’re working hard to keep our existing customers” or “We’re being really selective about our advertising and promotional expenses,” or “We’re cutting brands that haven’t sold well,” is going to get dumped on. They won’t really deserve it- they’ll just be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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January 22 2009 |
1,014 views | 56 comments
VF’s January 14th press release already had my attention before the web cast of their investors presentation was released. I strongly recommend you take the time to watch the whole web cast and look at the slides. You’ll see how a well managed company is going to survive and even set themselves up to prosper during our little ongoing economic inconvenience.
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January 14 2009 |
564 views | 1 comment
Reading and analyzing Quik’s 10K helped clarify some issues for me about industry strategy and the economy. I want to use some of their positioning statements to talk about how we compete in the much larger market we are, or want to be, a part of. When I say “much larger market” I mean the fashion driven market and the customers and potential customers who don’t skate, surf, or snowboard.
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January 12 2009 |
1,168 views | 25 comments
They filed this thing on December 30th. I, having no life, read all 89 pages New Year’s morning. I strongly recommend Proseco (Italian sparkling wine) over champagne. It seems to do fewer bad things to you.
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January 05 2009 |
1,055 views | 8 comments
These days, you don’t come across many quarterly reports that make it look like consumers are still spending. Urban Outfitter’s comparables store sales were up 9.9% for the quarter, though they go on to note that they were flat for November. They say it’s possible “…comparable store net sales may further decelerate during the remainder of the holiday season.”
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December 22 2008 |
454 views | 30 comments
PacSun has done a good job presenting their income statement so that it’s easy to isolate the impact of their discontinued operations. As you probably know, they’ve closed all their stores that aren’t branded as PacSun. They are now a one brand company with 938 stores. That resulted, in the quarter ended November 3, 2007, in a loss from discontinued operations, net of taxes, of $37.2 million.
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December 18 2008 |
581 views | 12 comments
I spent about 45 minutes Saturday morning drinking coffee and reading Wachovia’s 2009 economic outlook. I’ve included the link to it here. We all need to make our best guess as to what next year, and the year after that I suppose, is going to be like to manage our businesses to the best of our abilities.
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December 15 2008 |
523 views | 5 comments
Abercrombie and Fitch’s quarter ended November 1st was soft. Net sales for the quarter were down 8% to $896 million. Gross profit percentage fell just slightly from 66.2 to 66%. Stores and distribution expense rose 8.65% to $386.5 million. Other expenses were more or less constant. The result was that operating income fell from $186.6 to $100.1 million, or 46.4%. Diluted net income per share fell from $1.29 to $0.72 a share.
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December 12 2008 |
715 views | 4 comments
As you know and have been told about 17 times, Billabong has cut its forecast. Here’s the link to the call with investment bankers if you want to read the whole thing. For those of you who don’t want to read all 22 pages, here’s a great article that summarizes it. So, having short cut the process of analyzing the transcript from the call, let’s get to the heart of the matter.
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December 10 2008 |
940 views | 28 comments
Even been in a Dick’s Sporting Goods? I haven’t. Their 483 stores (including 85 Golf Galaxy and 14 Chick’s) in 41 states are mostly in the eastern part of the country. But I have visited Joe’s a few times, and I suspect they are similar to Dick’s.
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December 09 2008 |
181 views | 1 comment
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