Coming off a disappointing first quarter, in which sales fell 20%, Aéropostale is targeting this year’s Back to School season as a potential springboard to brand loyalty and profitability.
“As we discussed about 10 weeks ago during our last earnings call, we saw the first quarter representing a period of transition and a time of volatility for us,” Aéropostale CEO Julian Geiger said during the company’s May 21 first-quarter earnings conference call, according to Seeking Alpha. “At that time, we talked about working our way through a merchandise architecture that highlighted a broad assortment of more contemporary fashion, lower the focus of driving sales, but not necessarily creating demand. We also alluded to the lingering challenges earlier in the quarter of the West Coast port slowdown, as well as unseasonably cold weather. The quarter developed much as we anticipated.”
But, Geiger said, one of the operating imperatives for the second quarter is to enter the Back-to-School selling season “with extraordinarily high levels of merchandise currency, so that the new assortment we’ve created and discussed so optimistically has the ability to reach its full potential. As I have said previously, we expect that the Back-to-School period will represent a time when all of our efforts over the last nine months to change the trajectory of our business should come to fruition. As such, our performance in August will be a leading indicator of how we feel we will do during the remainder of the third quarter and into fourth quarter.”
Geiger is very excited about the company’s position relative to the Back to School season.
“I am confident that we will be in a position to win because I believe that the structural changes we’ve made to our organization will pay dividends in our store performance as it already has in the ecommerce area, which includes GoJane,” he explained. “That we’ve created a relevant and outstanding merchandise assortment, that we’ve updated our promotional playbook to create demand, that we have new and exciting marketing ideas to tell our story, that we are leveraging social media influences to underscore the compelling nature of our brand, that we have made dramatic improvements in the manner in which we will be allocating merchandise to stores, and that the rigorous testing disciplines we have instituted will give far greater insights into customer preferences. The contribution made by the sum of all of these changes in conjunction with the maniacal focus on merchandise currency should be the springboard to significant financial progress.”
Executive Vice President Emilia Fabricant echoed Geiger’s sentiments.
“Obviously, I do not want divulge our Back-to-School launch plans, but I will share that our floors will be anchored in key items that will capitalize on proven trends for the season,” she said. “We will offer our customer updated classics under the Aéropostale label and continue to differentiate ourselves through our emerging brands.”