Michael J. Nicholson

Jennifer, it’s Mike. I’ll take the first part of the question. Just in terms of the progress that Paula and her team have been making as it relates to product cost and IMU, what I’d say is on a macro level that we are as many other of our competitors are benefiting from this deflationary environment as well as the increased bargaining power that we have on the sourcing end. And we expect that this benefit will continue at least through the back half of 2009.

I’d also say that internally Paula and her team is working with our designers and the merchants across all of our business units focusing on value engineering our product without sacrificing product quality. And, in addition, Paula is very focused on consolidating our vendor base and we have essentially gone from some 100 apparel vendors, at the end of 2008 to about 75 in the first quarter and we’ll continue to drive that initiative as we move forward over the balance of 2009.

So together these actions are expected to positively impact our product costs this year.

Kay L. Krill

And Jennifer, regarding the product flow, I would say both divisions are definitely approaching this in the same vein albeit Ann has the core assortment of about 20% of their assortment that will live throughout the season and probably 30% to 40% of it will be key item driven and then the remainder will be fashion flowing in.

In LOFT they have less of a core except for in the casual bottom area, the casual bottoms and denim assortment will definitely live for the season adding on to it probably a little bit more, they’re probably on the 40% key item range and Ann’s probably on the 30% with fashion newness flowing in on a monthly basis. So, we’re hoping that that will help strengthen the gross margin as the team has really paid a lot of attention as to what those seasonal items will be.

Jennifer Black - Jennifer Black & Associates

Okay. And just one other follow-up, on the sourcing side, are there further changes to the lead times.

Kay L. Krill

We are constantly working on that, Jennifer. Paula and her team are really focused on improving that and we have definitely taken out four to five weeks thus far and Paula and I have committed to really work on taking another four weeks out. And she’s in Asia right now trying to accomplish just that and I think we’re making great progress but as you know it takes great discipline on everybody’s part to stay on calendar and adhere to all the processes in order to achieve that next four weeks. The next four weeks are not going to be as easy as the first four weeks taken out, but we’re all committed to doing so.

Jennifer Black - Jennifer Black & Associates

Great. Thanks a lot. Good luck.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Stacy Pak, SP Research.

Stacy Pak – SP Research

Hi. A couple of questions, I was wondering if you could give us a sense of the level of improvement that LOFT achieved in their comp during the quarter. Also, Kay, can you give us some evidence, obviously I heard what you said about the fast tracking in May, but evidence that Ann Taylor stores and LOFT product is going in the right direction for fall, maybe conversion increasing or something like that and then finally, Kay, I was hoping you could comment on your thoughts about color for fall. Is that going to be important for Ann Taylor stores and where does color come in for you? Thanks.

Michael J. Nicholson

Stacy, in terms of LOFT’s performance for the quarter, as we mentioned for the quarter their comps were down 24% and while we don’t report monthly comps, what I would say is that April was about ten points better than our quarterly performance.

Kay L. Krill