Joseph Megibow
Analyst · Wedbush Securities. Please proceed with your question
Thanks John. Looking ahead, we are committed to further strengthening our growth platforms and capabilities with a focus on four key areas; product innovation, omnichannel retailing, organizational effectiveness, and brand development. Let me provide an update on each of these. Starting with product innovation, we have many technologies and products in the pipeline that we are excited about starting with the new Purple Pillow expected to launch in the fourth quarter, we believe will be our best pillow yet, both in comfort, innovation, and mass appeal. With mattresses, our pipeline includes a reassortment strategy which will roll out in Q3 that will simplify and better articulate the benefits of our current models, as well as all new mattress models coming over the next year ranging from improvements driven from our years of listening to customer feedback to new inventions that we are very excited about. Beyond mattresses we are also leaning hard over the next year into our existing non-mattress categories, such as cushions as well as new categories that we expect to launch in 2020. For our omnichannel retailing we will continue our efforts to service the customer wherever and however they want, including continuing to aggressively expand our retail partner doors, significant improvements to our website and opening company-owned showrooms. With respect to wholesale, on top of growing same-door sales, our current focus is both deepening our relationship with our national players while building relationships with strong regional players that will allow us to expand our physical reach in areas of the country not serviced by our existing partners. We have found a great symbiotic relationship between DTC and wholesale with each channel supporting the other. As such, we will continue to invest in the development of our online showroom capabilities. Last month we hired Jimmy Drake [ph] as Vice President of e-commerce, a talented digital retail leader who is spearheading our digital initiatives including rebuilding and relaunching purple.com. And then under the guidance of our recently appointed Chief Retail Officer Tres White, we are continuing to expand beyond our already successful factory store. Over the remainder of this year our plan is to open additional company-owned showrooms in major metropolitan areas. These showroom locations are designed to help bring our brand and product to life in support of all of our channels and will begin primarily in locations in the West we test and learn. With respect to organizational effectiveness, we have continued to fill key roles as well as mature and build our core functions. In addition to Jimmy, we also recently hired Burke Morley as VP of Brand and Executive Creative Director. Burke has an impressive background of brand leadership at iconic companies including most recently Sonic Drive-In and Nike, American Eagle and Hollister earlier in his career. We have also placed important roles in project management, quality, safety, operations, and technology. Furthermore following the assessment of our controls and processes by an outside consulting firm earlier this year, we have been implementing process improvements throughout the organization. This includes controls to our accounting close process and policies and procedures to improve workflows and accuracy. And finally, for brand starting with Burke's hiring, we are working on building the in-house talent in order to better align our brand positioning and creative with unique differentiated and premium benefits of our products, especially the Purple Grid. In addition, we have signed with a digital agency and are actively exploring relationships with a variety of creative agencies. In summary, we believe our strategy is working. It has been a solid first half of 2019 as our team has been successfully executing against what we presented late last year. We have taken important steps toward improving operations and capabilities across the board which is reflected in our revenue growth and improved cash position, and we expect to continue to see improvements as we mature and grow. With the organization on much stronger footing, combined with a stronger balance sheet, I am confident that Purple is well-positioned to capitalize on the numerous near and long-term growth opportunities in and out of the bedroom that we believe lie ahead. Craig will now review the financials and our guidance in more detail.