PET project to drive Claire's sales during second half
11 Jun '08
3 min read
“Throughout this quarter, we have made significant progress in improving our organizational model and bolstering our merchandise offense by recruiting people to the business with strong industry, management and leadership experience.
We have confidence that our improved team, combined with the benefits from the implementation of the Pan European Transformation (PET) project, will create momentum and drive improvement in our sales during the second half of this year. PET will allow us, for the first time, to have three separate, dedicated merchandising teams focused on Claire's in North America, Icing, and Claire's in Europe.
“We began 2008 with an expense structure that anticipated same store sales growth. Given the current retail environment and economic conditions, we carefully reviewed our cost structure and estimate that we can save $40 million annually. We have begun to execute against a number of the identified opportunities and expect that we can save $15 million in this fiscal year, with the full annualized savings achieved in Fiscal 2009.
“Our same store sales, while still negative, have shown improvement in the second quarter. We are encouraged that the new merchandise organization, combined with our cost savings initiatives, will drive improved performance during the second half of this year.”