It was a tale of different results in two channels for The Children’s Place Retail Stores Inc. in the first quarter. While comparable-stores sales decreased, e-commerce grew at a healthy clip and now accounts for about 11% of total sales.

For the first quarter ended April 28, children’s apparel chain retailer The Children’s Place, No. 111 in the 2012 Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, reported:

• E-commerce accounted for 11.2% of total sales compared with 9.7% in the first quarter of 2011. Based on those percentages, e-commerce sales totaled about $49.1 million, an increase of 17.5% from web sales of about $41.8 million in the prior year.
• Total sales increased 1.8% to $438.5 million from $430.8 million.
• Comparable-store sales declined 0.7%.
• Net income decreased 18.6% to $23.6 million from $29.0 million.

“We made good progress in the first quarter by tightly managing our inventory, reducing expenses and improving operational efficiencies across the organization,” says CEO Jane Elfers.

The Children’s Place also expects to spend heavily on information technology, including e-commerce, the retailer says in its recently filed quarterly financial statement with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. In the first quarter The Children’s Place spent approximately $6.1 million on information technology, its corporate offices and other initiatives and approximately $800,000 on projects for its distribution centers. But over the next three quarters, The Children’s Place also anticipates spending approximately $40 million on store projects and about $22 million on information technology, including enterprise resource planning and e-commerce systems, the retailer says.