Mark Worden: Jim, it’s Mark. First spring, we’re seeing improvement across banners and across demographics. It’s very encouraging. And the two things that are absolutely working across low income or high income, urban and suburban are the new approach to our marketing campaign. It’s — we’re really surrounding people the social, digital and influencer and it’s resonating quickly with Carl’s fantastic slate of brands and new fresh value for providing — working great across banners. The big question again and again, the range for our guidance, and we’re still cautious is once we get past the spring season events, that’s going to be the big learning we’re going to have as we get into April and May, and we can provide more color when we get into reporting Q1 during May of what did it look like post event shopping for the lower-income consumer.
But right now, everything is resonating strong growth across all banners are feeling really good about winning share with our plans during event season, we’re waiting to learn and we have caution of what it’s going to look like for nonevent season still.
Jim Chartier: And then within the marketing, given the response we’re seeing, is there opportunity to do more within marketing for back-to-school and holiday based on what you’ve seen so far?
Mark Worden: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. We’re planning to replicate and increase for back-to-school. We had a good kids growth business in 2023. We plan to activate these plans and grow our ambition is not just kids growth, but we intend to grow back-to-school this year for the whole business is our goal. And holiday, we spoke at late minutes. We had a very good holiday season this year. We can do more because we were still testing and learning what did work, and so we can invest more for this upcoming holiday if it continues to work in back-to-school. So again, we have high confidence, our approach is working on event periods, and will be replicated and activated aggressively. We’ll learn if that approach works in nonevent seasons. And if that does work, then we’ll be able to provide an update in May on that progress.
Jim Chartier: Great. And then on inventory levels, you talked about reduced inventory further this year. Any specific categories where you feel like the inventory is still a little too high or which categories are you focused on reducing levels?
Carl Scibetta: Well, Jim, it’s Carl. We’ll continue to drive inventory levels down at the end of the season on seasonal products to make sure we come out even cleaner than we have in the past. We’re quite pleased where we came in this year in boots, inventories down about 30%. We think there’s still some opportunity there, to continue to drive that business down – I’m sorry, that was ending down. And then really, we are looking at all areas and we anticipate inventory improvements across the board, not that we have any particular area that is – has an extremely high inventory level. It’s pretty consistent across the company, but we think we can get efficiencies in all areas of the business.
Operator: Next question comes from the line of Sam Poser with Williams Trading.
Sam Poser : I’m just wondering if you could give me some color on the store traffic that you saw in the fourth quarter, especially at Shoe Carnival and then sort of how — what you’re seeing now versus what — how all these sales are being driven and what you’re doing to drive more people or if you need to the Shoe Carnival store specifically? Because it sounds like your Shoe Station traffic is very decent.
Patrick Edwards: Sam, it’s Patrick. With respect to the fourth quarter, it’s not uncommon for our traffic pattern and match our comparable store sales, which were down 9.4%. Our overall traffic was in that same range of down 9% throughout the fourth quarter. With respect to going forward now, similarly, not surprising that our sales are up low to mid-single digits. Our traffic is also sort of trending in that same way.
Sam Poser : Okay. And then Carl, you talked about — I’ve got a double question here. Carl, you talked about athletic being strong in that, I guess, in that period. And it sounds like athletic you’re still happy with it. Can you talk about what kind of things are working in athletic? And then separately, as you look at — you talk about inventory, can you talk about sort of how you think about like narrowing — maybe narrowing the mix going deeper on key items. You’ve always done that? And give us some idea how that might look versus 2023 sort of as we move through 2024.
Carl Scibetta: Sure, Sam. On the athletic side, we’re starting to see the customer respond to newness and freshness today, retro jogger kinds of products, the whole soccer category are really taking off with our consumer throughout the fourth quarter and until today, our business with court, our business with basketball and our business with performance running in our Shoe Station business continue to be very, very strong. But athletic right now is about newness and freshness and new categories. And our customers beginning to jump into those new sort of emerging new old categories that have come out. From a standpoint of inventory, sure we most definitely will continue to edit assortments, drive key items. We have a reliable flow of product coming in right now, and we feel that there’s great opportunity to continue to drive key items.
That’s what we do very, very well. So we feel we’re back to somewhat of a normal. We are back to a normal cycle. Our vendors are back to a normal cycle, and we will certainly move into what I believe, an exciting time from a product standpoint, driving key important items and brands.
