Shelley Broader, who became CEO of Chico’s FAS about six months ago, is focusing on four focus areas that will enhance customer engagement, customer experience, and customer loyalty.
During Chico’s May 26 first-quarter earnings call, Broader talked about this theme after completing her in-depth review of the company.
“These priorities aim to improve performance and increase shareholder value by evolving our customer experience, leveraging actionable retail science, strengthening our brands’ positions, and continuing to sharpen our financial principles,” she said, according to Seeking Alpha. “We are certainly making progress against these priorities.”
New initiatives in supply chain, non-merchandise procurement, and marketing are expected to result in $50 million to $70 million in annual savings, in addition to $14 million from the recently announced marketing and digital commerce realignment.
“While an encouraging first step, given my previous experience I know that this business can be much more successful by focusing on the profitability of each transaction, and that there are other actions we can take to further improve results and increase shareholder value,” Broader said.
Chico’s FAS comprises the following brands: Chico’s, White House | Black Market, Soma Intimates, and Boston Proper. It’s a specialty retailer of private branded, sophisticated, casual-to-dressy clothing, intimates, complementary accessories, and other non-clothing gift items.
Total first-quarter sales fell 4.4% while comparable sales slipped 4.2%.
“Despite the challenged macro trends, our effective marketing campaigns and our tremendously loyal customers enabled us to drive higher traffic to our stores, compared with overall apparel and accessory mall traffic,” Broader explained. “Once we got her into our store, our vibrant associates delivered our amazing personal service, producing higher conversion rates and only slightly negative transactions when compared to last year. However, our service and increased conversion were not enough to completely offset the weak traffic and sales across the industry, as the decline in our average dollar sale led to negative comparable sales.”
Broader said that response from focus groups and in-store feedback has been very positive about rebuilding the White House Black Market special occasion business “that our customers have sorely missed and have come to expect from our brand. We expect to benefit from our renewed special occasion focus by later this year.”