The Buckle Inc. recorded web sales growth in fiscal 2015, but store and overall sales declined.
Company executives cited a “challenging” retail environment for its sales decrease on its year-end earnings call Friday, made worse by a mild winter.
Online sales are becoming increasingly important to The Buckle’s overall sales. In the fourth quarter, e-commerce accounted for 10.6% of the apparel retailer’s sales, up from 9.3% last year.
For fiscal 2015, e-commerce accounted for 9.4% of total revenue, up from 8.2% in fiscal 2014.
“We continually work to improve the marketing of our e-commerce site,” CEO Dennis Nelson said on Buckle’s Q4 2015 earnings call. This includes improving emails, “and doing a better job of keeping our online store in inventory as well,” he said. The website helped clear “certain sale product which we had a little bit more of than in past years,” he said. The Buckle will continue developing e-commerce programs, “such as testing remarketing, to continue to grow our online business.”
For the fiscal year ended Jan. 30, The Buckle, No. 257 in the Internet Retailer 2015 Top 500, reported:
- Online sales increased 11.9% to $105.5 million, compared with $94.3 million in fiscal 2014.
- Total sales decreased 2.9% to $1.120 billion from $1.153 billion.
- Comparable-store sales declined 4.4%.
- Net income of $147.3 million, compared with $162.6 million in the prior year.
For the fourth quarter, Buckle reported:
- Online sales increased 7.0% to $35.3 million from $33.0 million in Q4 2014.
- Total sales decreased 6.1% to $332.0 million from $353.5 million.
- Comparable-store sales decreased 7.2%.
- Net income of $54.3 million, compared with $60.1 million in the same quarter last year.