Roger Farah
Analyst · Hedgeye Risk Management
Yes, it's a good question, and the reality is that e-commerce for us has been extraordinarily successful, and I appreciate you acknowledging not only the content of it but also the economic contribution e-commerce is making. It's one of the reasons that we're so excited about the Europe launch. We expect to learn quickly and then move out through the rest of the countries there. That's why I said on my opening remarks that we will research and then figure out how we want to do business in Asia and Japan. It's also why you read today a lot of pundits talking about 70%, 80% of the future growth in retail could come out of e-commerce, as a general headline. So the fact that we're 10 years into this, we've got a very talented team, it's important to us, we've figured out not only the front end but the service equation and commit to very high standards, gives us a lot of encouragement. It also is relatively low capital investment compared to brick-and-mortar stores. And therefore, if you get it right and you get the necessary infrastructure right, it's really about keeping up with the technology and the ability to stay current with customers' expectations or in fact lead them with some new ideas, which we've done. The other interesting aspect of e-commerce is, it is been proven that its impact across channels, whether our wholesale channel or our own retail channel, is compelling. So you would not be wrong in saying that as we go forward, focus on retail will have a heavy component of e-commerce. I don't think it replaces doing appropriate brick-and-mortar retail, and I think our challenge will be, by market, to figure out the mix and the ROIs and the how to reach customers and what the messaging will be. But there's no doubt that e-commerce from here on out will grow in its penetration through retail, and in fact will grow in its penetration to our total distribution strategy and should provide very nice profit returns and ROI returns as we expand and open around the world. There are obviously some start-up costs opening in Europe and there will eventually be in Asia, but I think our willingness to stay with this business in the early years and figure it out, for a single brand site that has distribution around the world, I think it's been a remarkable success for us and we're going look to grow that as a percent of our total business and particularly retail. So with that, I think we've concluded the first quarter remarks. I appreciate the support and interest on all of your parts. First quarter was clearly beyond our expectations, and we'll see how the rest of the year plays out. Thank you.