Ms. McGalla continued, “At Arden B, we built upon our strength in the dress and jewelry businesses in the quarter, though were disappointed with our performance in other apparel and accessory areas. We will carefully manage inventories in this business as we identify opportunities for improvement.
“Despite difficult sales trends in the latter part of the quarter, we generated merchandise margin improvement over the prior year quarter in both divisions, with better planned promotional cadence and overall assortment quality. We also ended the third quarter comfortable with our inventory levels as we enter the holiday season.”
Ms. McGalla concluded, “We transitioned to holiday floor sets for both brands in early to mid November and look forward to improved merchandise assortments to stabilize sales trends. We are mindful, though, that we continue to be up against a highly promotional calendar for ourselves in the prior year. We expect a mid-single digit comparable store sales decline in November followed by improvement in subsequent months of the quarter.”
marketing@alchempro.com
