Lynn Powers
Analyst · Craig-Hallum Capital Group. You may proceed with your question
Thanks, Steve. Our vision for Gaiam is to be a driving force in making Yoga Fitness and Wellness accessible to everyone. Our strategies and results during the year and the fourth quarter reflect the progress we are making in realigning our business around this vision. I'll now give a little color on the year-end results and then review our progress on our four key initiatives for 2014, and discuss our opportunities for 2015 and beyond. Our revenue for 2014 was in line with our expectations. Comp sales from our top 25 accounts not including our largest customer or any new customers were up 17% for the year, which shows the strength of the brand and our categories. These results were on top of the 20+ percent comp growth in 2013. However, our overall revenues were muted by several strategic moves that were critical to our renewed focus on our brand vision and overall operating income. In order to focus on our brand, our first decision was to not renew the Reebok license. While we are able to offset that revenue going forward with our own brands, revenues from Reebok branded product declined $6.8 million during the year as we made the transition. The second decision was to pivot our catalog-driven direct-to-consumer business to a digital-centric consumer-engagement strategy for the Gaiam and SPRI brands. We decreased circulation of catalogs which reduced revenues by $2.4 million in 2014. Third, we changed the way we operate our media sales. We moved from an aggregator model to a distribution model, where we do not take ownership of the inventory and only book our distribution fee. This lowered revenue for the year by$ 1.5 million, but improved our margins and working capital. Finally, our revenues were affected by our largest customer which suffered a data breach resulting in reduced customer accounts and lower sales. Our number one strategy in 2014 was to grow our store-within-store for Gaiam and Gaiam Restore. We celebrated growth in these core brands of 27% for the year and 45% for the quarter. We drove these results by improving our brand positioning, product development, and retail distribution. We expanded our Gaiam Restore line with several new product launches including new items for Active Sitting. We added 1170 doors with store-within-store sets at Kohl's in the third quarter. This type of partnership will help Kohl's achieve its publicly stated goal of becoming a wellness destination. Our second strategy was to grow our store-within-store presence for SPRI, which grew 76% for the quarter and 52% for the year. This growth was fuelled by adding SPRI store-within-stores at Myer and at Target in the fall, as well as anniversarying our line of SPRI Cross Train at The Sports Authority. Between Gaiam and SPRI, we added over 2500 doors to our strategic store-within-store platform, which will bring our total to over 17,000 doors. Our focus on innovation was our third strategy for 2014. That has been and always will be a key strategy for us. Our biggest win for this year was our Yoga Apparel line. As we looked at our brand, we recognized a clear white space opportunity for a mid-market Yoga Apparel line that provides a compelling consumer option for well-designed, yet affordable yoga apparel. According to research firm SportsOneSource, the Yoga apparel category grew by 45% during 2013. With the success of our first significant retail launch partner, Kohl's, we forecast apparel to drive $15 million to $20 million of incremental revenue in 2015. Our final strategy for 2014 was to pivot our direct-to-consumer business. Over the past year, we discussed our goal of transitioning our direct-to-consumer business from its previous catalog-based model to a digital-centric model focused on consumer engagement for our mobile and social platform. During 2014, we all but ended our catalog activities and incurred appropriate expenses. Going forward, we’ll produce only a limited catalog run. As a result, our direct-to-consumer business will be smaller in 2015 than it was last year, potentially impacting revenue by $7 million, but improving operating margin by $3 million. As the retail market continues to involve, we recognize that it is key for us to have direct relationships with consumers, where we can tell our full brand story and connect in meaningful, and engaging ways. To that end, we relaunched spri.com and gaiampro.com, and are working on relaunching [gaiams.com] in mid 2015. Our new sites are focused on a consumer-engagement strategy that aligns with our stated vision. We also invested in the app space through our acquisition of Yoga Studio, the number one Yoga app in Apple’s US App Store. Through the Yoga Studio app, we’re increasing our direct link to the 800,000 people who have downloaded the Yoga Studio app. This acquisition gives us new insights into consumer habits and opportunities to market Gaiam products and content, which will help drive long-term brand loyalty. I’d now like to discuss our key strategies to continue our growth in 2015 and beyond. Our first and largest initiative will be building our Yoga Apparel business. We’re excited about our upcoming April 25 launch with Kohl's, the number one preferred destination among female apparel shoppers according to recent research. We worked with Kohl's on a comprehensive marketing campaign, branded fixtures, and great aisle placement next to Nike. We’ve expanded our bench strength in apparel by hiring the former head of design for Athleta. This expanded team will help us grow the assortment and release new apparel lines in 2016. Our second focus is on Wellness. We entered this category years ago with our Balance Ball Chair. In 2011, we launched the Gaiam Restore brand and have since followed up with our new SPRI Dynamic Recovery and Active Therapy lines which launched in 2012 and 2013 respectively. Together these brands offer wellness solutions to consumer with a variety of needs. We’ve applied our product development and merchandising capabilities to the categories, and now offer full 4 foot store-within-store sets of each of our wellness brand, something which many of our competitors cannot achieve. As a result of our work, Wellness product revenues grew 32% in 2014. We'll continue marketing our assortment of Wellness products through our existing and new retail channels. Third, we plan to expand our demographic appeal. We know from Yoga Journal that there are 24 million active Yoga participants, and another 80 million people that would like to try yoga if it were more accessible. Of that 80 million 47% are men. To attract them, we’re releasing a slate of yoga accessories, and media content aimed at improving athletic performance. Our Yoga for Athlete media series features NBA All-Star, Kevin Love, and former NFL All-Pro running back, and Heisman Trophy winner Eddie George. We’re adding two more titles featuring the Miami Marlins two-time MLB All-Star Giancarlo Stanton, and New England Revolution and U.S. Men’s National Team soccer player, Jermaine Jones. This spring launch will reflect our full multi-channel capabilities spanning retail and online. You’ll see advertising on major online media outlets including ESPN, USA Today, SLAMonline and stack.com. Also online, we’ll launch a new website GameOnYoga.com that will offer these products to athletes seeking new ways to achieve higher performance. In retail, we'll launch a 60 store test at DICK's Sporting Goods. As well as with our Wellness line, we’ll leverage our distribution network to place compelling, branded, store-within-store sets in major retail outlets. We’re also preparing to launch Kids Yoga accessories and media in the fall using a similar targeted strategy. We expect to leverage our Apparel and our new Men’s and Kid’s Yoga lines to open new retail channels including department stores, children stores, drug and grocery. Our fourth and final focus for the year will be on growing our International business. International represents 6% of our revenues and we believe there is a huge opportunity to address the Yoga, Fitness and Wellness business abroad, and to do so as successfully as we’ve addressed it in here in the US. During 2014, we launched in Whole Foods and then 320 doors with Tesco, both in the UK. We’re in active discussions with these and other retailers to continue expanding our footprint. We recently reorganized to put a higher priority on this initiative. Between new product, Apparel and Men’s and Kid’s Yoga and distribution initiatives including International and new targeted distribution channels, we see great opportunity for the company this year. We had some challenges in 2014 mainly with our largest customer and our decision to drop certain third-party licenses. However, we’ve demonstrated that the opportunities in our brand with product solutions, digital content and distribution are more than enough to offset those challenges and drive growth in the years to come. With that in mind, I also wanted to take a minute to address the situation taking place at many of the ports along the West Coast. Well our business is sensitive to these types of disruptions as most of our inventory moves through these ports. We were able to utilize existing domestic inventory during the fourth quarter to soften the impact of the port slowdown. Not all inventory is perfectly suited for each customer, so we incurred some expense in reworking our domestic inventory. In spite of the situation, having arrived at a resolution the potential for backlogs going forward will shift $7 million of revenue from the first to second quarter causing first quarter to be flat with last year from a revenue perspective, and second quarter to have unusually high growth. In addition, we are aware of some in-stock issues with a major customer of ours and are working closely with that customer to resolve those issues. We expect to reach normalized in-stock levels there in Q2. And before I close, I want to point out new segment reporting which reports the Gaiam Brand and Gaiam TV separately, with Gaiam Brand representing all of our activities outside of Gaiam TV. During the last two years, Gaiam Brand segment revenue has grown $33 million or 27% to a $157 million. In 2012, the segment generated a negative contribution margin of $1.8 million and in 2014, we generated a contribution margin of $6.6 million or a gain of $8.4 million. Put in another way, we improved revenue by $33 million with an incremental contribution margin of 25% including the cost to launch our Apparel business that we incurred in 2014. I believe these results demonstrate the scalability of our model as well as the benefit of our work over the last two years. Looking ahead, excluding the negative impact of our reduced catalog circulation, in the near-term we expect the Gaiam Brand segment revenues to grow approximately 20% in 2015, and to generate incremental margin in the 15% to 25% range. With the low end of that range resulting from additional costs we may incur to expand our Apparel and International businesses. This incremental margin will materialize beginning in the second quarter of 2015 as our in-stocks improve and our apparel launches. In closing, as I hope you agree, our vision and strategies are based on a careful analysis indicating that our market will continue to show healthy growth. When it comes to yoga, Gaiam is the most recognized brand in non-apparel yoga products by twofold, and second most recognized overall yoga brand. Our business is driven by our focus on Yoga Fitness and Wellness as this is our heritage and our authenticity. We’re creating a true destination for the Yoga consumer that will incorporate all their needs from easy-to-use apps, engaging subscription content, affordable yoga clothing, along with our broad selection of Yoga Fitness and Wellness accessories. In partnership with Gaiam, our retail partners can offer their customers a unified, branded assortment of yoga apparels, accessories, and media content that no other brand can offer. All of this gives us confidence that we’ll be able to grow our business and drive strong top line and bottom line growth in 2015. This concludes our prepared remarks, so I'd like to turn the call back to the operator for questions. [Ash]?