Aeropostale CEO Julian R. Geiger is confident that the back-to-school season is a steppingstone to even more success during the holiday season, paving the way for the return to profitability and brand loyalty.
“Our second-quarter transaction comp was the strongest since 2012, and our current performance reflects the continued improvement in transaction comp,” Geiger said during the Aug. 27 second-quarter earnings conference call, according to Seeking Alpha. “We believe that this is an early indicator that our target customer is beginning to recognize changes we have made to the assortment, and either is shopping at Aéro for the first time, or is returning to the store. While not yet at our ultimate destination, which is clearly defined as returning to profitability, I am encouraged by the sequential progress we feel that we have made.”
Beginning with the back-to-school season, Aeropostale introduced floor sets with greater balance, focused more on merchandise officials believed were updated classics, and less on assortments that have been more contemporary.
“We said that we intended to build product lines geared to today’s real teens by refining our merchandise architecture to target the flirty tomboy girl,” Geiger said. “This filter has been effective in developing an assortment of updated classics with a twist, punctuated by special fashion items. During the course of the past 12 months, in concert with the Aéro team, we have set goals, developed strategies, and initiated changes that would help turn the business around so it could reach and maintain profitability. In our previous earnings calls, we always pointed to the back-to-school selling period as the time during which we would begin to reap tangible benefits and start to generate positive momentum from our collective efforts. I feel this is happening.”
Back-to-school is a steppingstone to holiday, and holiday is a steppingstone to spring, Geiger said. He thanked the entire organization for its hard work and commitment to “restoring our brand. We are a very different company today than we were 12 months ago. We have a vision of a brand positioned in the proper niche. We have new and understandable merchandise filters. We have a more credible and relevant approach to marketing. We have created an organizational structure that streamlines decision making. We have strong disciplines in place both for inventory management and currency. We have embraced testing more fully and have the ability to read and react to perceived opportunities. We have fostered aggressive international expansion. We have re-instilled confidence in the organization. We have started to regain some of the customers who left us in recent years, and most important, we have begun seeing a change in the vitality of the business. Clearly, we all understand that these are only small steps in the right direction. While nobody is claiming victory at this point, internally we all believe that victory will come.”