Some of the new stores were affected by the fact that we opened an awful lot of stores in those four states that have been most affected by the economy, Arizona, Nevada and Florida. Some of that is also a mix as we have opened more small stores this year than we have in the past.
The Internet business has been very strong. We saw $340 million for the year, so up about a little over 40% and continue to make a lot of progress there.
Those combination customers with brick and mortar and Internet are obviously our most profitable customers and also lead to high sales. We are very encouraged with that and expect that to continue to grow substantially better than the industry as a whole on the Internet.
Adrianne Shapira (Goldman Sachs): Should we expect a sharper IMU in 2009?
Kevin Mansell: We are going to use the tools that have lead to improved merchandise margin to our benefit by driving better value.
That is the objective because the environment we are in gives us a huge market share opportunity and as we look at the competitive set given their own performance last year and where they are positioned they do not have those tools in place to be able to do it.
Adrianne Shapira (Goldman Sachs): When you look at your positioning, good, better and best across the nine box grid, where would you expect to focus your attention when we step back and look at the assortments?
Kevin Mansell: We are going to have balance. When you think about the success we have talked about in our exclusive brands they are generally better and best and they have been very well accepted because they are legitimate brands.
We are also very focused on value and as a result brands like Jumping Beans that we introduced last year have been a wild runaway success and that is opening price point.
We are going to have strong opening price point and we are going to use the tools that we have that are lifting our margin to drive that and then we are going to balance in there new, better and best brands because we have competitors who we can take market share from.
Adrianne Shapira (Goldman Sachs): You have done a great job in terms of taking down clearance levels, where do you think that can go to as a percentage of the mix?
Wesley S. McDonald: We are going to continue to manage the inventory. It varies by month, in January and February it is still a significant part of the mix but we can continue to reduce clearance.
The great thing about our planning allocation team and our merchants is some of our lower volume stores where we made the most progress in gross margin actually had higher sales per store and lower store inventory per store.
We can continue to reduce clearance and continue to get increased sales per store and drive better gross margins.
Adrianne Shapira (Goldman Sachs): When do we start to anniversary some of those big declines?
Kevin Mansell: We are looking at inventory first in total. So, you are carving out a part that we call clearance because we are making a lot of progress in both transitioning through it and selling through it.
But, we expect to continue to run with lower clearance levels all year. This is not a sharp turn strategy, or a one-time strategy and we expect to run with lower inventory total levels all year.
David Glick (Buckingham Research); In the traditional women''s sportswear area, can you give us some color now that you have Presidents'' Day behind you, is it big enough to be a difference maker and just your initial reaction to the launch?
Kevin Mansell: It is definitely big enough to be a difference maker. It has been on the floor for basically less than a month but it’s been incredibly successful launch. It has far exceeded the plan we had for it.
The most exciting news was that the other major brand that we have on that same pad is Chaps, has also performed exceptionally well compared to last year.
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