Gary Friedman
Analyst · Chuck Grom from Gordon Haskett. Your line is open
Yes, I don’t think anybody has got the real data on it. But the key is there is been an exodus from cities. COVID was the stimulus for that. And I’m not the one that made this up. Actually, one of our big shareholders identified this early on. And they said they did math – their math on this and it was going to exponentially they thought, play in our favor. And then we did some kind of smaller research you indicated, but that’s what’s happened, right. You’ve had people migrating to suburbs, migrating to second-home markets, places like Napa, Aspen, the Hamptons, Palm Desert, kind of second-home markets like that, that are drivable for people that they are at some distance where they could work part time in the cities but live out of the cities. Those markets have exploded. You can’t buy homes in the nice suburbs. I mean it’s just multiple offers and rising prices. So – And so the simple math is this, like take a – someone lives in a 2,500 or – foot apartment in New York or very nice 3,000 square foot apartment and they have moved to a house in Greenwich, what’s the comparable house in Greenwich 6,000 to 10,000 square feet, could be 2 to 3x a square footage. Those rooms aren’t going to be empty, not if they can afford to furnish them. So that’s kind of a good thing for us. And that’s why I think that even without any newness for almost 2 years, our 2-year comp is growing. So – and what’s the main thing that changed is we’re in a much better stock position like back orders are down 10 points or more. It’s like with the latest word. I mean they don’t tell everybody just hold your fingers up to me. But like the last time I looked at a couple of weeks, go down about 10 points, even more than 10 – more than 10. So as back orders are going down, demand’s going up, right? And that makes sense. Like I mean, our back orders at their peak were 4x normal. Yes, 4x normal. And so now they are down to probably 2.5x normal. Yes. And they should get better because I think we’ve done a good job prioritizing production and flow. And I’m glad we didn’t try to newness because newness usually takes longer – I think it’s going to be great. I think we will have the best newness introductions we’ve ever had in our history. We’ve had more time to refine samples, to get things right, quality sure things are – we’re not rushing our manufacturing partners. And so we will have – by the time newness launches, we will have 2 years of newness, four seasons of newness. I don’t – we’ve never launched that much newness at one-time. I like people are going to think it’s like Christmas again at RH, we don’t even sell Christmas stuff, but it’s going to be like what the heck just happened. I think that the aesthetic evolution and the quality evolution of the brand will be shocking to the consumers. It looks so good. I mean I seriously I wish everybody on the phone, including all our people because I know we usually have like a lot of our teams, all our galleries probably have an open line. Our DCs have an open line, and there is probably a couple of thousand people in our company listening to this call, maybe more. And like I wish I seriously right now, we were out of COVID. We can get everybody together and take everybody through what’s coming. Contemporary is shocking. It’s so good. It’s like I thought modern was great, contemporary the best work we’ve ever done. It’s just going to open up the aperture of the brand. I think people at the highest end, the highest end interior designer is going to go, what did they just do? Like it looks so good and this maybe 20 interior designers in the world that we’re not going to completely impressed. It’s like they are really silly rich people that use them. Like everybody else, yes, they are just going to go, we better joined that movement there or we will get less behind. It’s really, really great stuff in the pipeline. And we’ve had a lot of time to refine it and make it better. We will probably have – we will launch with the lowest returns, the lowest damages, all the kind of things that happen when you ramp up new goods, new factories, if you have new materials, new materials, new construction, especially with a big aesthetic move an opening of an aperture like we’re going to a contemporary. But even the product interiors to modern the new stuff and the quality impact that our teams that are working on couture and bespoke, we have like some of the greatest experts from the highest end of the industry. So I wish I could talk about them, but I am not allowed to announce anything. But like a couple of them are sitting in the room right now, they look like they are going to – like they have their masks on, but you can tell they are smiling and turning red. But like the best. Now, we have some of the best people in the industry. When the industry here sits on our team, everybody is going to go. So it’s just great stuff coming. I couldn’t be more excited. I just wish everybody to be here and see it. And yes, but that’s okay. We will just make it. The good news is, like we keep making it better. So every season, we delay it like it gets so much better. So it’s between now and next spring, it’s going to continue to get better. The presentation, the execution and so we’re super, super excited. And I think that the market is – I think there is – look, I was the guy – I have the guys thought there’d be a recession in the last 5 years. I was like I was ready for a recession the last 5 years. I’ve been really wrong. Instead what happened, the pandemic. So – but now I’m finally thinking, okay, I called this wrong, I never thought we’d be comping 47 comp with no new goods. And back orders at 3x historical rates, 2.5x historical rates, and – but we are. And so I think that again, the home business, the home – people buy a home, they don’t furnish it all immediately. It’s over a period of time. It takes a long time. I mean, right now, you can’t get a contractor to remodel a bathroom. You can’t get interior designers are all backed up. Our teams have been backed up like customers complaining like how come I have to wait so long for an interior designer. I mean they are all busy. Professional services around the home are all busy. There is not enough homes. There is not enough people to build homes. There is not enough people to design – do interior design. There is backups everywhere. So, even if – and we are at record levels everywhere. So even if the market slows down. If you go to the home business is a little offer, Pulte took numbers down a little bit. The question is, did Pulte take numbers down a little bit. How are those numbers compared to historical numbers? They are still really good numbers. And so if you’re in our position and you’re kind of a brand without a lot of peers and building a market of one, and you’re the place to go and especially where we have these new galleries that are having outsized growth, right, there is – like we’re in a really good place today. So I just think that I’ve gotten more optimistic. And look, my fault that we have the highest back orders too. I cut the inventories too aggressively. And then when the trends went to 20, I said by 10. When the trends went to 40, I said, they’ll never stay there by 20. They are only going to be there for 2 weeks and then they didn’t stop. So listen, the fish thinks at the head, right? Like I kind of screwed a lot of the stuff up too because I didn’t make some of those calls were just kind of risky. You don’t want to – you all a sudden buy a 40% increase. And then you’re kind of pregnant with all the inventory and the sales dropped from 40% to 8% to up 8% and you’re like. So we’ve been chasing the whole time, probably a lot of – I’m probably not the only person that was too conservative by an inventory. So I think the pent-up demand and some of the commentary in the home business about pent-up demand, I think it’s all kind of right. And even I think about why I got the economy wrong over the last 5 years. I think there is a new economy. When you think about the dynamics of the current global economy, the stock markets and what’s driving everything, there is new businesses. There is new kind of companies. There is new industries that are being formed. They is faster and faster innovation and technology is changing the world in an exponential way. So look at the last recession, which was now like they can’t believe like go ‘08 or ‘09, it was like going on 14 years, ‘08, right like we are going to be in ‘22 pretty soon. The long – I think the longest economic expansion in the history of the United States before that was 11 years, right? So we’ve never seen this, right? And even through a pandemic, which was like a kind of, I guess, a recession, but not normal, right? Like so I think there is this underlying structure of a new economy that is making businesses more productive I think about how much more productive we are because of technology and the things we’re doing inside the company, at all levels, and how other companies must be more productive in all the new innovative kind of companies that are changing the world. And I mean in ‘08, ‘09, I think there was two companies that were $500 billion like GE and Exxon, right, or something like that. Like maybe Apple, I think, was getting close. Now there is multiple $1 trillion companies and many more $500 billion companies and they are growing. So I think that there is a lot of things that are different that probably are harder to see because of the pandemic. But when I try to listen to the people that are way smarter than I am about this, there is a lot more optimism in the smartest people I know who have generally been more critical and pessimistic. So – and yes, they try to listen to them and connect the dots as it relates to our business. So – But I think things are very different. I think the pattern recognition of before, there is probably just going to be all new patterns that we have to be prepared for.