Ascena Retail Group is continuing its push to better tie together its online and offline stores, hoping that some of its online retail success rubs off on its shrinking store sales.
Chief financial officer Robb Giammatteo told analysts on the retail group’s fiscal second quarter 2017 earnings call Monday that direct sales, which is how Ascena refers to its online sales, accounted for 23% of the company’s total revenue during the second quarter, up from 20% of total revenues during the same period last year. That means Ascena, No. 76 in the Internet Retailer 2016 Top 500 Guide, generated $402.1 million in online sales during the quarter, up 9.1% from $368.4 million last year. Ascena’s retail brands include Dressbarn, Maurices, Lane Bryant, Catherines, Justice, Ann Taylor and Loft.
The retailer expects to have full omnichannel capabilities, including ship-from-store, ramped up by this summer across all of the company’s brands, chief operating officer Brian Lynch told analysts on the call.
“By the time we get to the June/July timeframe, we’ll have all brands with the full range of omnichannel fulfilment capabilities that you could ask for,” he said, according to a transcript from Seeking Alpha.
“We continue to see the disruptive trend toward e-commerce transactions and the growing influence of online engagement on traditional brick-and-mortar activity across our sector,” added CEO David Jaffe. “We’ve invested heavily in our omnichannel platform over a multiyear period and we continue to aggressively evolve our organization to embrace and serve customers in this new retailing paradigm.”
For the fiscal second quarter ended Jan. 28, Ascena reported:
- Net sales of $1.748 billion, down 5.1% from $1.842 billion during the same period last year.
- A comparable sales decline, including e-commerce, of 4%.
- A net loss of $35.2 million, compared with a net loss of $22.6 million.
For the first six months of fiscal 2017, Ascena reported:
- Net sales of $3.427 billion, down 2.5% from $3.514 billion in fiscal 2016.
- A net loss of $20.8 million, compared with a net loss of $40.7 million.