Please proceed with your question.Richard Dearnley What was the mix of first aid and Westcott, Clauss, et cetera?Paul Driscoll 59% was first aid in the first quarter.Richard Dearnley Okay. And do you have what that was last year?Paul Driscoll It was — I think it was 55%.Richard Dearnley That sounds right. And then could you — there was a good discussion of Westcott and back-to-school and back-to-office inventory. How is — what’s the over-inventory situation in first aid?Walter Johnsen Well, there’ve also been some customers that have purchased more inventory than they needed, and one big online retailer a year ago purchased a great deal of first aid kits that took some time to work through. So, it’s — they tend to be similar. The difference, of course, is with first aid kits, there are expiration dates.
And so, if they overstock, they’re taking some product risk that they probably wouldn’t want to do. So, they tend to keep it lower than Westcott, where our product family is — just doesn’t have much obsolescence.Richard Dearnley No expiration, right?Walter Johnsen Right.Richard Dearnley Because it looks as though medical usage is — Hospital Corp had a good sales and usage and so on, so that channel looks pretty strong. Okay.Walter Johnsen I think it is.Operator Our next question comes from the line of Michael Wasserman with Moors & Cabot. Please proceed with your question.Michael Wasserman Walter, how would the Company reactive interest rates headed north rather than south from here?Walter Johnsen Well, Mike, we’ve certainly seen in the past year, as Paul pointed out, the interest rates that we paid went from about 2.5% to 6.5%, and you pay more interest.
And it may very well go up higher, and we’re working quickly as quickly as we can to drive debt down. And I mean you could double the debt, and we’re still profitable, double the interest rate.Michael Wasserman Okay. So you’re not overly concerned about possible additional…Walter Johnsen I’m concerned because I think we’re seeing stresses in the financial system globally, and this is not a free trade. There are trade-offs across the board relative to how businesses operate, how banks operate and how the consumer responds. But I think for us, the level of debt and the kind of margin improvement that we’ve had have more than offset each other right now.Operator There are no further questions in the queue. I’d like to hand the call back over to Mr. Johnsen for closing remarks.Walter Johnsen With no further questions, this call is complete.
We’d like to — we look forward to speaking with you after the second quarter and thank you very much for joining us.Goodbye.Operator Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.
