Urban Outfitters 2012 Annual Report Download - page 9

Table of Contents
Merchandise
Our Urban Outfitters stores, websites and catalogs offer a wide array of eclectic merchandise, including women's and men's fashion apparel, footwear
and accessories and an eclectic mix of apartment wares and gifts. Product offerings in our Anthropologie stores, websites and catalogs include women's casual
apparel and accessories, shoes, as well as home furnishings and an eclectic diverse array of gifts and decorative accessories for the home, garden, bed and
bath. Our Free People retail stores, website and catalog offer a showcase for casual women's apparel, intimates, shoes, accessories and gifts, primarily
developed and designed by our Free People wholesale division. Our Terrain garden center and website offers lifestyle home and garden products combined
with antiques, live plants, flowers, wellness products and accessories. Our BHLDN retail store and website offers a curated collection of heirloom quality
wedding gowns, bridesmaid frocks, party dresses, assorted jewelry, headpieces, footwear, lingerie and decorations. Our merchandise is continuously updated
to appeal to our target customers' changing tastes and is supplied by a large number of domestic and foreign vendors, with new shipments of merchandise
arriving at our stores almost daily.
The wide breadth of merchandise offered by our retail segment includes national third-party brands, as well as exclusive merchandise developed and
designed internally by our brands. This selection allows us to offer fashionable merchandise and to differentiate our product mix from that of traditional
department stores, as well as that of other specialty and direct-to-consumer retailers. Merchandise designed and developed by our brands generally yields
higher gross profit margins than third-party branded merchandise, and helps to keep our product offerings current and unique.
The ever-changing mix of products available to our customers allows us to adapt our merchandise to prevailing fashion trends, and, together with the
inviting atmosphere of our stores, encourages our core customers to visit our stores frequently.
We seek to select price points for our merchandise that are consistent with the spending patterns of our target customers. As such, our stores carry
merchandise at a wide range of price points that may vary considerably within product categories.
Store Operations
We have organized our retail store operations by brand into geographic areas or districts that each have a district manager. District managers are
responsible for several stores and monitor and supervise individual store managers. Each store manager is responsible for overseeing the daily operations of
one of our stores. In addition to a store manager, the staff of a typical Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Free People, Terrain and BHLDN store includes a
combination of some or all of the following positions; a visual manager, several department managers and full and part-time sales and visual staff. The staff of
a typical Anthropologie store may also include a customer care manager who helps tailor the shopping experience to the needs of Anthropologie's target
customers. A Terrain garden center may also include merchandise care and maintenance staff. The staff of a BHLDN store also includes a product, bridal and
event manager, appointment stylist and a category specialist.
An essential requirement for the success of our stores is our ability to attract, train and retain talented, highly motivated store managers, visual
managers and other key employees. In addition to management training programs for both newly hired and existing employees, we have a number of retention
programs that offer qualitative and quantitative performance-based incentives to district-level managers, store-level managers and full-time sales associates.
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