Glad to see someone is still looking at the board
and thanks
for the response.
Last month's
same store sales growth numbers for IBI (3%) were
lower than the entire LTD company - a wierd
situation.
Both LTD flagship brands stores and IBI closed lots
of
underperforming stores and that surely helped LTD and I
would
have thought given IBI a boost also.
So the
slowdown in IBI seems strange.
I do wonder about the
LTD underperforming brands situation.
Is the sales
number reflective of some better performances
brought
about by the new people and greater attention
of
some oldtimers or just a reflection of getting rid of
stores
that were habitually poor performers to reveal the
best of
the locations.
If no real corporate
improvement has been brought to the
LTD base of brands, I
would think some of the remaining stores could
eventually show the deterioration that started
to hit
this company a few years ago.
I have seen plenty of
times a company claim it has tightened
up its
operations (you know, look for better locations, keep
the
merchandise fresher, make each store nameplate a
distinct
brand with a distinct image, respond faster to changes
in consumer tastes,etc) but really it mostly just
continued to do the same things with a different store
base.