New York & Co. plans to place a greater focus on ecommerce, digital marketing, and will release a mobile app later this year to capture enhanced customer engagement, according to CEO Greg Scott.
During the company’s recent fiscal first-quarter earnings call, Scott noted a challenging retail environment that led to less-than-stellar results of a 3.3% sales decline while comp store sales slipped 2.3%.
“While the year got up to a slower start driven by a significant change in traffic trends at the end of March and a slow reception to seasonal basics including dresses, we are working hard to adjust our game plans for Q2 and the balance of the year by focusing on (our) continued investment in ecommerce and digital marketing to support a strong growth that we are seeing,” Scott explained, according to Seeking Alpha. “The launch of our mobile app in Q3 will also support this growth.”
Overall marketing spend was down $2 million during the first quarter.
“That said, we did continue to invest in digital marketing which continues to see strong double-digit growth in traffic and sales in our ecommerce business during the quarter,” Scott said. “In Q1, we saw strength in differentiated passion products while we did experience slowness in key seasonal basics. In the quarter, our Eva Mendes collection continues to perform above expectations and we are seeing the trend become stronger in Q2.”
The company’s Eva side-by-side and shop-and-shop stores continue to outperform the company. What’s more, the Soho Jeans sub brand remains strong driven in the first quarter by Denim and the company’s Soho Soft Shirt franchise.
In the first quarter, New York & Co. began working with new partners that will enable it to grow overall sales and traffic. The partners include Zulily, “where we had a strong cast in Q1 piloting shopkick in 140 stores beginning in June, and both Criteo and Bluecore on the digital side,” Scott noted.