Good day, everyone and welcome to the Genesco third quarter fiscal 2015 conference call. Just a reminder, today's call is being recorded. Participants on the call expect to make forward-looking statements. These statements reflect the participants' expectations as of today but actual results could be different. Genesco refers you to this morning's earnings release and to the company's SEC filings, including the most recent 10-Q filing for some of the factors that could cause differences from the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements made during the call today. Participants also expect to refer to certain adjusted financial measures during the call. All non-GAAP financial measures referred to in the prepared remarks are reconciled to their GAAP counterparts in the attachments to this morning's press release and in schedules available on the company's homepage under Investor Relations. I will now turn the call over to Bob Dennis, Genesco's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning and thank you for being with us. I am joined today by Jim Gulmi, our Chief Financial Officer. As in prior quarters, Jim's detailed review of the quarterly financials has been posted to our website along with the press release from earlier this morning. Also joining us today is Mimi Vaughn, our Senior Vice President of Strategy and Shared Services and incoming CFO. Let me first begin with a few words about the CFO transition that we announced in the press release this morning. As we said in that announcement, Jim Gulmi has decided to step out of the CFO role at the end of this fiscal year. Mimi Vaughn, who many of you have met or at least heard from on a previous conference call and who currently serves as our Senior Vice President for Strategy and Shared Services will become CFO on February 1. We also announced that Parag Desai, who was until earlier this year, a principal at McKinsey with extensive experience in consumer goods retail and technology will assume the Strategy and Shared Services role at that time. Transitions at this level are always momentous. This one is especially so because it has been almost three decades since Genesco has had a new CFO. Jim has been the constant thread running through successive chapters of dramatic transformation of the company. To note that he has served as CFO under six different CEOs, as remarkable as that is, it doesn't begin to tell the story. To put it in the terms that Jim will appreciate most, let's just cite a couple of numbers. In 1986, when Jim became CFO, Genesco stock opened the calendar year at $3.50 and closed it at $3.38 per share. The company had $538 million in net sales that fiscal year,…

Thank you, Bob. As you know, we have posted more detailed financial information for the quarter online, so I will only be highlighting a few points. Earnings per share, adjusted as we break out in the press release, came in at $1.28, which was below our internal projections for the quarter and below last year when adjusted EPS was $1.43. Consolidated net sales for the quarter was $723 million, an increase of 8% and essentially in line with internal expectations. Total comp sales increased 3% for the quarter with stores up 3% and the direct business up 9%. Journeys and Lids had positive comps in the quarter and each delivered improved sales trends compared with the second quarter. J&M and Schuh comps were flat. Quarter-to-date, total comp sales through Tuesday, December 2 increased 9%, which includes a direct comp increase of 22% and a store comp increase of 7%. The earnings shortfall from our expectations for the quarter reflected a lower than expected gross margin, which came in about 30 basis points below expectations and 20 basis points below last year and a higher-than-expected SG&A as a percent of sales. Both of these misses reflected factors in Lids Locker Room and Lids Team Sports that Bob has discussed. The hat business, both in the U.S. and Canada performed in line with expectations as there are other businesses in the aggregate, with particular strength in the Journeys group driven by strong comps and improved gross margin. Adjusting for all the items broken out in the press release, expenses as a percent of sales increased to 42.9% from 41.5% last year. More than half of this increase was caused by small EVA bonus accrual this year compared to the large EVA bonus accrual reversal last year in the third quarter. We have…

Thanks, Jim. Once again, while we are disappointed with the result for the third quarter and with our outlook for the fourth quarter, we still believe we have a plan for addressing the performance issues at Lids and we are pleased with the overall strength we are seeing in the beginning of the fourth quarter, particularly at Journeys. Finally, we want to thank our entire team in advance for all the hard work that will go into delivering the best possible results for the holiday season. And with that said, operator, we are ready for questions.

[Operator Instructions]. We will hear first from Erinn Murphy of Piper Jaffray.

Great. Thank you. Good morning. And Jim, I wish you all the best. Mimi, congratulations on your appointment to the incoming CFO. So you guys are one of the first companies to report post Black Friday. There has just been a lot of mixed views in the industry of how the week went overall. But would just love your perspective of what you are seeing, both online and store broadly in terms of how that consumer has been reacting?

Sure. We had a great thanksgiving weekend. As we noted, we opened a lot of stores earlier than usual. We experimented with staying open all night. Various chains went at it differently and even within the change, changed it up as to whether they stayed open all Thursday night through to Friday morning or not. But overall we had a great result. So if you look at Thursday through Sunday's comp for the company, we were up 12%. The stores were up 10%, e-com was up 46%. Now a caveat on that. So Schuh participated in Black Friday with a promotional event for the first time. They sat out in past years. And so their total comp was up 49%. So pretty crazy numbers. So if you back them out and you say, well what went on in North America? In North America, our business over that period was up 5%. So the stores were up 6% and e-commerce in North America was actually down 10%. Now let me explain that. E-commerce shows up as a sale when we ship and so what we had was a huge backlog of orders. So if you look at e-commerce over that weekend in terms of orders instead, we were up 68%. So obviously a huge backlog that we are shipping this week. And again, Schuh is the outlier. They were up 176% because of their first time participation. So if you back them out again, and you just look at North America, our orders in North America were up 40%. You know, just the observations from the team, traffic got much more spread out. It's no longer noses to the windows of the stores waiting for the gates to open as much as it had been in the past. We don't do big door busters. We are more promotional but we don't play what I call the silly game in terms of loss leaders. So we don't drive that kind of traffic. We really live off of everybody else's. But net net, obviously off of those numbers, Erinn, we are very pleased with our performance on Thanksgiving, Black Friday weekend and we will see how that carries forward.

Great, Bob. That's great. Very helpful to hear. And just, I guess last year, just if you guys could remind us, so there were a lot of store closures and just abnormal challenges in traffic, just given the severe weather, ice storms exiting December into January. Could you just remind us what the impact or slowdown had been in some of your businesses last year as we look to anniversary that?

Erinn, I will give you, the overall theme is our sense is that sale get pushed around, but when you do total comps for the season, we have never been ones to say that the weather shorted us. So you know, we have to get into the individual weeks to say and we know that comps this year will reflect those comparisons. But we didn't plan out the season with an eye for having missed sales last year that we are going to make up this year. Jim, anything you would add to that?

Got it, and just the last question. You called out both Lids and Schuh as being more promotional and kind of locked through some of the themes there. What are you seeing in terms of Journeys and the promotional environment there as we head into holiday as it compares to last year? Thank you.

Journeys was slightly less promotional and obviously when you have a narrow and deep assortment in the product that the customers really want and it's generally a product that's not widely distributed, that just screams opportunity to do a lot of full price selling. So that's what we have been doing and that's what we expect to continue to do.

Great. Thank you, guys. And best of luck in the holiday season.

Thanks.

And we will hear next from Scott Krasik of Buckingham Research Group.

Yes. Hi, everyone. Good luck, Jim. Being the CFO at Genesco is like being the head coach of the Steelers, but I wish you well. So just going into Lids a little bit. Maybe talk about some of the challenges you have in the licensed division because you are dealing with bigger vendors like Nike, you don't necessarily get the buying power that you did growing to scale at the hat business. And then to the extent that you expect to get better profitability next year, are you going to get more leverage? Is there actually cost cutting? Or is it just you are not going to add as much SG&A?

So a bunch of questions there. Let's just sort of repeat what's going on. The hat stores are solid. The direct business is solid. And our expectations for direct next year when we actually give guidance will be robust because of what we described with early experience of turning on the system that we call Locate which is locating the right product for the customer regardless of where it sits in the chain. So when you look at Locker Room and Clubhouse, those businesses were, from a profitability standpoint, a little more challenged. The comparison you draw on vendors, we actually in many ways think of it as a plus. Because these our vendors who generally maintain, just like with Journeys, pretty narrow distribution and they are committed to maintaining full price selling in the channels to whom they do sell and that's always been our friends. And so we have vendor concentration in the hat stores. We will have vendor concentration in the Locker Room stores that is similar. And we think because it's narrowly distributed, that's a benefit. When you look at what's going on in the broadly assorted stores, it's a couple of things. First, and we are going to just get used to the fact that we are exposed to teams winning and losing. So for the quarter, we did what we are calling internally a hot market analysis. We are looking at the top gaining teams and the top losing teams and doing a comparison. And in this quarter losing teams in terms of market share were bigger than the gaining team. So you know, we had things like the Cardinals, Ohio State, as good as are doing this year, we are very exposed to Ohio State. As you know, they are Clubhouse stores of…

So let me ask a different question. The need to be promotional or the promotions that you have done, are those comparative driven? Or are those because your losing teams hurt more than your winning teams help, so you have more inventory left over from the losing teams?

A couple of things. It is a little bit competitive. We have one big competitor who we are going to compete with. The second more important thing I think is that the merchants have come to the conclusion that they need a faster rotation at a higher turn to achieve a greater level of freshness, a greater percentage of in-season goods in the store and physically enough space in the store to show what is current and relevant and to be not as pronounced in the other businesses. And to do that right, just like in the fashion business, where you start to exit spring in July, we need to start exiting some of the losing teams sooner and more aggressively to make sure that we have exited say football by the time the season is over to make room for baseball. So what you would expect to see when you chase that formula is slightly higher sales, slightly higher margins but ultimately the freshness is what wins the day. And that you just more efficient and you have a better presentation in the stores. We are all in agreement on that. We are all chasing that. It's going to take some time for them to get that right, but I believe they are going to get them all right and it will be a big win for us.

Scott, let me follow up on the first part of your question about major vendors. And just to refresh your memory, in the Locker Room stores, the general mix of product is somewhere in the range of, let's say, 40% apparel and then the difference is split between accessories and hats, with probably hats making up a smaller percent. And the significance of that is that on the hat side, really nothing different than what we are already doing in our regular hat business. So we know how to deal with bigger vendors there and we have been doing it for a long time. On the accessory side, it's very, very fragmented and we are working on that. So there's really no one big vendor there. It's actually probably too fragmented. And the apparel side is really where I think the question comes in. So I just wanted you to know that it isn't a 100% of the business. It's really probably about 30% to 40% of the business is apparel related. Where there is something new in terms of dealing with a larger vendors, even though we have some in hats, but that's a new part o fit.

Okay. That's fair. Thank you. And then just last, it sounded like you did an acquisition in Canada. What was the other acquisitions?

So the two acquisitions that we have most recently done in the retail space was the Canada acquisition. An acquisition called Jersey City. So now we are cheering harder for Canadian hockey teams and then the other one was Cardboard Heroes, whose stores are heavily concentrated in Ohio and we believe that's where we got very fortunate because LeBron going to Cleveland, as we inventory that store up should be our friend.

All right, good luck and good luck, Jim, again.

And so now we will go to our next question from Jay Sole of Morgan Stanley.

Hi. Good morning. My question is just one more on Lids. It sounds like you are saying that the merchandise issues are really not about the product itself, it's not that the customers don't want the product. It's really more about tactical things didn't quite play out as you expected. Is that fair that the product that the merchants are picking is what the consumer wants. It's just getting it to right place, right time?

Yes. It's more -- the two issues would be teams and then flow. So teams is out of our control. Other than we have to be quicker to markdown the teams that are not going to sell through well, because of their win/loss record. So we are going to move in that direction. And then flow is just simply writing a buy plan that more aggressively exits one season in order to be even fresher and more pronounced and more present in the next season.

Okay, got it, understood. And then maybe if I can switch gears for a second. Bringing on a new person on some team, bringing Parag on to the team, as you look out, you know you mentioned he brings a fresh perspective. As you come together as a group and look out at the main issues that you want to focus on, is it besides the Lids stuff that we are talking about around the flow, are there other things that you are going to work on right away that you are going to getting him involved in right away?

Well, first of all, think of Parag's arrival as just continuity with all the work that Mimi has been doing. And so you know, first of all, there's a line job, because HR and IT are a big part of their responsibility. And so there's involvement in a lot of the omnichannel development that we have been doing, a lot of the investments we have been making and having a lot of the right IT people, which for every retailer is a huge challenge. And then that role involves both internal strategy and external. So again got going back to Mimi's tenure in that role, she played a big role in shepherding the Schuh acquisition. And so we continue to look at deals and so the external part of what we are doing strategically will fall squarely in Mimi and Parag's lap. And then we are helpful to the teams. But the main driver of performance initiatives at each of our operating divisions are the operating divisions themselves and we here at corporate function as advisors to them. But they are well equipped to take on this stuff, and we are there to help as needed. So the bigger element of strategy in the job that Mimi had and Parag is picking up is more external and then some coordination around internal.

Got it, understood. Thanks so much.

Sure.

And we will go to our next question from Sam Poser of Sterne Agee.

Good morning. Jim, I am going to miss you. I guess, a follow-up on all of this regarding Lids and Lids Locker Room and so on. Are you looking at putting in new systems? And is next year because of what you are doing, do you expect to get the margins going next year? Or is it sort of a fix-it year and then you will know how well it's working when we get towards the end of the year?

So the systems issue. At this point, when you think about systems within the retail world, so this would not just be us, but certainly us in stage. It's a continuous process, Sam. Systems become obsolete over time as the technology develops in our world. And so when you look at Locate, this is which is the system I referred to, that's an important innovation there. They are rolling out a new front-end called Hybris, which is very important. And it's not just Lids. You know Journeys is doing this. J&M is doing it. And so think of it as more of a continuous improvement exercise rather than these discrete projects that once you get them done you are done.

I am more referring directly to the issues that you are dealing with. Maybe systems that will help you better identify the slower sellers to take the markdowns more quickly, juicing up a markdown op or something like that, to put in place, to help you do the things, specifically at Lids and Lids Locker Room that you are doing better or at Locker room, since you chosen to slow down the store openings and so on and dig into this. I was wondering if there are specific issues surrounding that? I understand what you are saying about in total, but I was really looking for ---

Yes. But Sam, in terms of the merchandising challenges that we have identified, it is not as much a systems issue as it is both a philosophy of saying let's get faster on turn, let's get fresher, let's not chase margin as hard, let's chaste turns, that sort of philosophical. And then it is creating the amount of time it takes for the merchants to attend and to think through and then execute what needs to get done. And so they will have more time, more ability to do that if we give them a little breathing room by slowing down the acquisitions and the new stores and let them get their arms around it. It is less of a systems issue.

And so they have the mechanisms that can support that change in philosophy?

They have systems that can do it. We could probably invest in systems that will allow them to do it better and more easily. Again, there will be a continuous improvement around merchandising systems. Right now, Journeys is moving through an upgrade on their merchandising systems that allows them to do this better and more efficiently and they are already very good at it. So I don't want to say we are not going to change systems, but it isn't discretely a systems issue.

Thank you, and then the guidance for next year, Jim, looks like it's about a 10% increase in EPS excluding, on the high end of this year's guidance, excluding the stuff associated with Schuh? When you are thinking about that, can you sort of give us a little more color as to what you are putting into that guidance and how you are thinking about it?

Yes, sure. I have never heard you be so delicate in asking a question before.

You are leaving. I feel bad. I don't want to upset you on your --

Yes. Thank you. Let me kind of give you some insight to that. You might look at it, which is what you are doing and say, well that seem a little aggressive. But let me kind of back in to some of our thinking on it. That increase is about $10 million increase in operating income. And if you do you break that down, we are going to have less headwinds from the standpoint of EVA adjustments in the fourth quarter and also the Schuh contingent bonus will be less in the fourth quarter.

I was talking about next year. I was more talking about next year?

I am sorry. So I was all ready for that. Sam, I was all ready for the fourth quarter. You surprise me.

You see, it was not as easy as you thought.

Yes. We are putting in, as I said, low singe digit comps, okay. And again, we haven't taken it all the way. I mean, we haven't done a lot of analysis but just the trend is based with that low single-digit comps and with the slowdown in opening new stores, certainly in the Lids group. You know that 10% should be doable. There isn't anything magic it. It is actually obviously a lot lower than or lower than we had earlier anticipated, but you know with let's say low single-digit comps and let's say in the 3% range, we think we can leverage off of that. And so a lot of this is going to be leveraged and the drop that we have been sitting in gross margin, we hope will moderate. So it will be a combination of those factors.

So you are planning on basically flattish or less down gross margins next year?

Yes.

And then you would think that you should be able to lever the SG&A. I guess the question is, can you get back to, like, 2014 levels kind of situation or below because it hasn't levered. It was sort of flat that year. So that's what I am more of where I am thinking?

No. I don't think we can get back to the [indiscernible] all at once, at least with that kind of comp, 2% to 3%. So I don't believe we can get back there, but we will be moving in that direction. I think we get pretty close in gross margin, but not in leveraging expenses.

All right. Thank you very much and good luck. And I look forward to celebrating with you.

Okay. Thanks.

And we will hear next from Mark Montagna of Avondale Partners.

Hi, good morning. Congratulations, Jim. And a question on Lids growth. How many stores have you already committed to next year? And is that all you are going to open? Have you ruled out any acquisitions? And then can you quantify what the savings on pre-opening costs and any other related costs are by the fewer stores of next year versus what you have had for this year?

I will work backwards. No, we can't quantify the savings. It's not a on savings play in terms of slowing the growth. It is an execution play. So it would show up, we believe over time in gross margin and comp. The store commitment for next year, in the hat business is can be business as usual. So let's separate that out. And there will be continued slow growth on a percentage basis within the hat store world because we continue to see good returns as we open those stores. In the Locker Room business, we have a handful of commitments which we will carry through on. And beyond that as we write our budget for next year, we don't expect to do much more, if any more, than that. And in terms of acquisitions, I just don't want to ever say never, because there is a couple of ones out there that we know are spectacular opportunities and if they came to us by strike, we would do them. But more than likely, we are not going to stretch to do anything more as we think we will benefit from focus. So that's sort of a commitment to slow growth but I don't want to nail it down to specific numbers, Mark.

Okay, and then I think you had some DC projects that were going on with Schuh and Lids. Wondering where those stand? When you expect them completed?

As we said, the Schuh DC is open, up and running, on time, on budget and gives them enormous capacity within the way we build that out. We have option value on additional capacity which would take a small amount of capital investment. So we build it, essentially with expansion. The Lids is also consolidating their DC as they grew so quickly, as we recited in the script, that required them to take on more space, which ended up to be other buildings within the industrial complex in which they sit and that adds in efficiencies. You have got trucks running back and forth. You know that's the only way you get it done and we have consolidated down to one building and included in that one building is a robotics picking system which is fully constructed now and if you ever want to comet to Indy and see it, we would love to host you. It's very cool to just look at. It is in test phase right now and all of that is going well and we expect it to be online and in production in the first quarter. So most of the heavy lifting on the distribution network that we needed is done and in both cases we now own some extra capacity both at Schuh and Lids to support future growth. And Jim or Mimi, anything to add? Okay.

All right, and then just with Schuh. I noticed during the quarter, at some point, you opened a store in Germany. Was just wondering if you could walk us through what's going on there?

Well, we have not opened a store in Germany. And we continue to look at Europe and as we have said in the past, Northern Europe is our current focus. But we do not have a current store open. So just you will have to stay tuned on that.

Okay, and then just lastly, just regarding Journeys. Is there a difference in performance between men's and women's? Or is it even?

Difference in what?

In performance in terms of comps?

Yes, comps. Is one leading the charge, women's versus men's?

If it is, it's not very material. I don't know the numbers. And a few things that we sell are actually dual gender. So it's a little tricky to quantify, but it's not pronounced.

Okay. Thank you.

And moving on, we will go to a question from Mitch Kummetz of Robert W Baird.

Yes. Thank you. Congratulations, Jim, Mimi. Jim, don't hurt your knees or anything. You are going to need those come February. A couple questions on Lids. So Bob, can you break out the comp in the quarter, hats versus non-hats? Or the headwear stores versus the non-headwear stores?

We haven't been disclosing the comp specifically. Jim can give you a little bit of direction on it.

Okay. Just one second.

Yes. So I got something here. So the hat stores were low single digit positive and the Locker Room stores were low single-digit negative. And then we got hit very hard in our Clubhouse stores. Those are the ones where we have a relationship with the Ohio State business. Year-over-year, it's been tough for us. So that explains most of that shortfall.

Okay. And then maybe that's a good segue. Go ahead?

I was just saying, the Canadian hat business was particularly strong. Very strong in Canada.

And then is there any way to quantify what maybe the operating profit shortfall on Lids was in the quarter relative to what your plan was going into it?

Well, let's put it this way. If you look at the total quarter, and you look at all of our other businesses, they were where we thought they were going to be, okay. So the net shortfall was in Lids. It is our guidance.

Right.

Now, and that's important point. Let me just back up on that. Because when you look against guidance, the miss was, as Jim just said, heavily related to Lids. And as we mentioned on in the scripts, we had planned Lids to actually have an improvement over last year and it actually came in off of last year. When you look at numbers year-over-year for our divisions, Lids was still both on absolute basis and on a percentage basis, the one that slipped the most from last year but several of our other businesses slipped from last year. It was a tough retail quarter. The distinction being that a lot of our other businesses planned that. They saw it coming and they had projected it in a way that allowed us to write guidance that assumed that it would be difficult. And so when you get to the compares to last year, it was Journeys did great and it was challenging really for everybody else. Just most challenging for Lids. And again, the big miss for us is that we had expectations that Lids would actually do better. One of the things that, you sort of look in the rearview mirror and you get really smart, the Locker Room and Clubhouse business last third quarter was up significant double digits. And we had actually planned it to be up a little more on top of that. In particular when you have all this exposure to teams, again, looking in the rearview mirror, you would say, well, you know, was that a good number? Obviously it didn't work out to be a good number. So it will forever be a challenge for us to be as accurate when we plan out Lids' business because we are more exposed to teams. We get national with our footprint that will moderate a little bit but you still have exposure to big national, big market teams versus small-market teams.

And on the shortfall at the non-hats stores, so it's this Locker Room, it's Clubhouse, it's Macy's, and then even team sports. Is there any way you could, I don't know, in order of magnitude, rank those in terms of how they fell short of plan? Was the biggest part of the miss, Clubhouse?

Both Clubhouse and Lids Team Sports were significant.

Okay.

They were significant. There was some shortfall in Macy's as we have talked about and then the rest of it was on the wholesale business.

Okay.

Okay.

And then the last question I have, maybe just trying to going back to Sam's question about next year. Can you talk about what the, I mean it's a low single-digit comp. Jim, I think you said 3% comp you can leverage, but how should we think about, and I know you are dialing back the Lids store growth. How should we think about Lids units? I think you plan to end of this year with 1,380 stores. Where does that number? Does that number grow next year at all? Is it flat? And how should we think about growth in units across the other banners?

As Bob said, we are only going to be opening, you know, there could be some exceptions obviously, depending on, we find some good locations, but right now we are just looking at just a growth in the hat stores, okay. And not a lot of growth. Pretty close to where it was this year. And then we are looking at not a lot of closings, but there will be some closings. So you know, I would think it would be of a net standpoint, I don't know, we don't have any firm plans in place, but certainly it would be less than 50, I would think.

Okay. All right. Great. Thanks, guys. Good luck.

Thanks.

And we will hear next from Steve Marotta of CL King & Associates.

Good morning, everybody. Two very quick questions. Jim, as it pertains to CapEx for next year considering that you are talking about store growth, can you offer a little bit of guidance on what the delta might be on a year-over-year basis from a CapEx standpoint?

Yes. This year, as I said, we are going to be close to $140 million, a little less than that. Next year, it's a little fluid, obviously because of all the IT things, but I would think it would be $120 million, $125 million. In the $120 million to $125 million, probably in that range.

Okay. I know you mentioned also that as a percent of sales, SG&A came in higher than expected because of the shortfall at Lids. From an aggregate dollars standpoint, was it planned at roughly $310 million?

Was it planned at that? No, it was planned a little less than that.

Can you offer that delta there roughly?

What's that?

Can you offer that delta there?

Yes, I can. Lids came in actually very close in absolute dollars from absolute dollars expense standpoint. Scary close. The problem was, when they miss their sales, they weren't able to deleverage and that hurt us from a leveraging standpoint. And the major reason for the increase in expenses was primarily due to Journeys doing better than we had anticipated, okay, in absolute dollars.

Okay. All right. That is helpful. Thank you.

And our next question comes from Jill Nelson of Johnson Rice.

Good morning. Could you talk about just a little bit more on Macy's. You implied that that was below plan issues there. Do they kind of mimic what you are seeing at Locker Room and what not?

Yes. It sort of mimicked Locker Room, but the real challenge at Macy's was opening 96 stores in three months. And I mean, you just have to witness the events. You are trying to time it. You are hiring salespeople. They are going through training usually in one of our stores. If you opened the store in the month that you were targeting, you are in great shape. But these stores ended up back loaded. Obviously, we didn't actually plan them to be at 96 in the third quarter. So some of them opened up with inventory that wasn't quite right. And so there's just a lot issues related to getting that many stores open that quickly and they impact performance. So I would say, from a merchandise standpoint, the issues would be similar for a store opened on time, more pronounced for a store opened off its planed cadence. And then you have got the additional burden of brand-new salespeople operating, paying for the training of them and then they got to get in their group. So you don't look at a store like that and say wow, there is a measure of success or failure. You say, great, I got it open, now let's start working it. And so many of them in one quarter is a burden on the quarter.

And we have opened, obviously over the years, a lot of stores. There's some issues on this one. I think as one is, we have got another party involved in it, in the middle. But another issue is that we are, in many cases, as Bob said, from an inventory standpoint, it's not necessarily does have wrong inventory. The problem is, sometimes you are opening stores mid-season for sport and so it's kind of hard to transitioning in the mid-season and decide how much of this versus that. So I think we have learned a lot in terms of when to open the stores from a merchandising standpoint. So all of those things contributed to it. It just took a little longer to get inventory in line in those stores which affected the topline which eventually affected the bottomline.

A good measure of that is, we did our test stores last year, opening them, I think in the third quarter and the beginning of the fourth quarter. And now, so we have our first Macy's stores going comp and the comp on the Macy's stores, it's a handful of stores, but it's strong. So you learn as you go and if you are getting smarter and you are learning, you should have some nice comps as you get the merchandise mix right.

I appreciate that. And just last one, flipping to Journeys. Clearly both sides of the business are working there. Boots are strong, it seems like. Could you just talk about, maybe, as you have seen in the fashion athletic trends turn very strong for Q3 and into Q4, how about the insights into spring for that business, given it takes over a bigger part of the mix?

Yes. I mean, generally we just think that we have got a lot of very, let me just broadly say, we have got a lot of good things working in Journeys, as you say on both sides. And casual was strong for us before we got to boot season. So we have good things outside of boots operating within the casual. You are right, athletic as a percent of total becomes more important in the first half. And so the fact that we see a lot of newness and a lot of excitement in athletic bodes well for the first half of next year.

Thank you.

And our last question in the queue comes form Taposh Bari of Goldman Sachs.

Hi, guys. Good morning. Congrats to the Journeys teams on some nice trends there. Jim, I obviously will miss you. So I guess a question on traffic. It seems like you have a lot of mall-based exposure, yet your comps are good. So can you just talk about what you are seeing in terms of traffic conversion at, I guess, Lids and Journeys?

Yes. So at Journeys, we referenced in the script the counters. And we have invested in counters for our stores, but we haven't anniversaried them. So I can tell you what the traffic is in absolute basis. We have no good reference point. You see what we see in terms of the shopper track data on the malls. You know, our perspective on that, we have a perspective on how traffic to the mall can be down and how comps can be up. And it basically speaks to how people shop and there is a large swath of people who do their window shopping, if you will, all of their browsing, all of their research online. And so a lot of the traffic falloff in our view, our people who aren't just walking the mall to figure out what they might want to buy down the road, they are walking the mall with more purpose to buy, hence conversion of the people walking into the mall is higher. I would refer you to a great piece by a consulting firm, A.T. Kearney that interviewed a large number of shoppers that quantify that effect and it supports that thesis. And that's especially true for teenagers. And so in our segment, our kids, as you can imagine, every kids glued to their smart phone does a better job of figuring out what they want to buy by the time they get to the mall and so that would explain the broad mall pattern of lower traffic, higher conversion. We don't have the data right now to speak to it, specifically to our stores, but we will when we get to the second half of next year.

So what is the conversion? I guess kind of parlaying that, what does the conversion look like for your online business? I would imagine, based on your comment, that it would be down, just not for you, but in general, because more people are, according to what you are saying, it seems like people are pre-shopping online but then transacting in store. Are you seeing that online with your conversion trends?

Journeys' conversion is up. So I think we are winning on all fronts simply because the merchandise is so compelling. Our site has been managed in a way that navigation and checkout becomes, the same thing I talk about earlier on the call, it is a process of continuous improvement and so that applies to our web business as well. And so between inventory and the quality the site, we have been seen conversions go up. Of course, when you look at conversion, as you probably know what you need to do is look at conversion across devices, because conversion is naturally lower on mobile. So when we talk about having improved conversion, we really think about conversion by device type as the measure of how well we are doing there. Because then you have a big mix change.

Got it, and then I just had another question on Lids. So the non-Lids hat business, call it team sports, or I am sorry, the Locker Room and Clubhouse division, what percentage does apparel represent of that merchandise?

It runs in the 40% to 50% range.

Okay.

And then headwear is 15% to 20% and the balance is the hard goods. And it's that hard good business that is especially a fourth quarter item. And so we intensify around that when we get in the fourth quarter.

And is the weakness in that business concentrated at any particular category? Is it broadly challenged?

We think the opportunity is in apparel.

The opportunity for improvement?

Yes.

Okay, and can you also just, I know it's a small part of Lids, but it seems like it's making a lot of noise to the entire portfolio in the interim. Can you size up that part of the business on a full-year basis, on a fourth-quarter basis? I think that would be helpful to the extent that you can?

The Locker Room business?

No. Locker Room and Clubhouse. So the non-hat part of Lids?

Yes. I mean it's a business whose revenues for this year is going to be in, Jim, what's the ballpark number? Hang in there.

While you look for that, the other question I had was, I know you have a lot of self-help initiatives to stem the bleed there, but are you expecting the margin performance to improve in the fourth quarter and into 2015? Or are you giving yourself some cushion, given that it may take some time?

Well, quarter-over-quarter, obviously the margin for Locker Room and Clubhouse, it explodes positively in the fourth quarter, because it is a fourth quarter business. So that's when you get all of your leverage. And so you know, that's why we were speaking about how the big store count increase year-over-year in the fourth quarter will be our friend, because every one of those stores will be nicely profitable in the fourth quarter.

How about on a seasonally adjusted basis, like year-over-year? Are you expecting gross margins to continue to decline in the fourth quarter like they did in the third quarter?

Yes. And that was part of why this guidance came down. It would not only put down the third quarter, but we took down the fourth quarter.

In the fourth quarter it came down because of gross margin and SG&A, but particularly in the case of Lids, we took down the gross margin. And to answer your other question about sizing this. If you look at the Locker Room business and Clubhouse business, it will be in the $170 million to $180 million range from a sales standpoint.

But if you think of it on a run rate basis, it's bigger than that, because Jim just gave you an annual number, but we opened 96 Macy's in the third quarter. We made an acquisition, two acquisitions. So you don't have the full year numbers for those plus the new stores we opened. So the run rate for that business is meaningfully higher. My numbers did not include Macy's.

And what's the fourth quarter concentration roughly? Like percentage wise for that business?

What do you mean percentage-wise?

Like how much of the year is done in the fourth quarter?

How much in the fourth quarter.

Yes. Sales is in the 40% to 50% range and earnings are higher than that. It's a very, very much a fourth quarter business.

Got it. Thanks, guys. All the best.

Yes. Okay, thanks.

And that does conclude the question-and-answer session. At this time, I would like to turn the call back to Bob Dennis for any additional or closing remarks.

Well, let me close first by one more time thanking Jim Gulmi for his exceptional leadership over his entire tenure here at Genesco. We are very grateful for what he has done over these many years. And then secondly, we will be seeing many of you, I imagine, at ICR in early January and so at that point, we are excited to give you the update on how holiday worked out. Thank you all for joining us.