Express 2010 Annual Report Download - page 27

International Stores
In 2009, we entered into the Development Agreement in the Middle East with Alshaya under which Alshaya
constructs and operates Express stores, and we charge a royalty percentage based on monthly sales volume. As of
January 29, 2011, Alshaya operated seven Express stores located in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab
Emirates under this Development Agreement. Beyond North America, we intend to continue to pursue
development agreements to expand our global presence in the Middle East and other select regions
internationally. We believe that partnering with companies and individuals who have significant experience and
proven success in the target country is to our advantage because it allows us to leverage our partners’ knowledge
of local markets to improve our probability of success and reduce capital investment and risk.
Internet Website
Since July 2008, customers have been able to purchase our merchandise over the Internet at our website,
express.com. In 2010, our e-commerce sales increased 60% relative to 2009, but still only represented
approximately 8% of our net sales in 2010. In 2009, our e-commerce sales increased 231% relative to 2008, but
still only represented approximately 5% of our net sales in 2009. We design and operate our website using an
in-house technical staff. Our website emphasizes simplicity and ease of customer use while integrating the
Express brand’s fashion-oriented imagery used in our stores. We update our website periodically throughout the
day to accurately reflect product availability and to determine where on the website a particular product generates
the best sales. In addition to selling regular merchandise on our website, we also use our website as a means to
sell marked-down merchandise as well as sizes not available in stores.
Store Management and Training
We believe that our store managers and associates are key to our success. Each of our retail stores is led by a
store manager and, depending on the volume of the store, one or two co-managers as well as part-time
management associates. We believe that our managers and associates are committed to our customers and are
passionate about our brand. On average, our store managers have been with Express for seven years. The number
of store associates we employ generally increases during the early Fall and holiday seasons, and will increase to
the extent that we open new stores.
We empower our managers and associates to deliver a superior shopping experience through training, fostering a
culture of accountability, and providing them with sales data that helps them to optimize their own store. While
general guidelines for our merchandise assortments, store layouts, and in-store visuals are provided by our home
office, we give our store managers and district managers substantial discretion to tailor their stores to the
individual market and empower them to make store-level business decisions. Our comprehensive training
programs are offered at the store, regional, and national levels. Our programs allow managers from all
geographic locations to interact with each other and exchange ideas to better operate stores. Our regional, district,
and store managers are compensated, in part, based on the sales volume of the store or stores they manage.
Through our training, evaluation, and incentive programs, we seek to enhance the productivity of our store
associates. Our store associates receive extensive training from their managers to improve their product expertise
and selling skills. We evaluate our store associates on measures such as sales per associate hour, items per
transaction, and dollars per transaction to ensure consistent productivity, to reward top performers, and to
identify potential training opportunities. We bring our top managers to a conference each year in order to reward
them for their performance and provide them with additional management training.
Marketing and Brand Building
We use a variety of marketing vehicles to increase customer traffic and build brand loyalty. These include direct
mail offers, e-mail communications, magazine and in-store promotions, web-based banner and search
advertising, and social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. We use our proprietary database to tailor
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