This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. Well, the apparel company lands End reported earnings last week and for the second quarter, revenue came in at three eight four point one million dollars. That was an increase from twenty three point one percent in the second quarter of fiscal twenty and an increase of twenty eight point eight percent from the second quarter of fiscal twenty nineteen. The company's CEO,
Jerome Griffith, joins us now. He's joining us on the phone from Long Island, New York. Jerome, it's so great to have you on the show. How are you. I'm good, Thank you, Thanks a lot for having me. Yeah, thanks so much for joining us. Hey, I want to talk a little bit about the challenges that you see, especially when it comes to the supply chain and how you're thinking about manufacturing right now, give us the idea of the changes that you've had to make over the last
eighteen months as you've weathered this pandemic. Well, even even prior to the pandemic, one of the things we wanted to do was to sort of spread the risk We have been producing about forty two our products out of China up going into we get to to expand that out into other countries so that we weren't really dependent
so much on one country at all. What's happened to us over the course of the last let's a year to year and a half is that products getting into the States have started to slow down dramatically, and costs have really risen, not just costs on shipping, but costs on raw materials. So you see cotton costs and we do a lot of cotton um rising pretty significantly. But then you look at just the cost of shipping things
from any country here. Whereas containers three years ago we're costing around four thousand dollars a container, the last six months they've been up in the twelve of the fifteen thousand dollar range, and I've heard quotes as high as twenty five thou dollars for a container. And the same things happened with air shipping, not not that we ship a lot by air, but but those costs have been
going up as well. So you know, we will continue to look at expanding our network to make sure that we have a little bit more options than than just going to one, two or three different places in order to get get products made and shipped. Drowing such a pleasure to have you us. I love speaking to the retailers because you you have such a lens into what's going on in our US and global economy. You know, supply chain one thing. I want to talk a little
bit about the labor market. You know how it lands end dealing with a pretty tight labor market. I mean, how are you staffing stores, facilities? You guys seem to be seeing some growth now in e commerce. What is the priority for hiring? Uh? Well, e commerce really runs out of our corporate office and that's of our business. So that's been running along relatively well, um for the last two years. Our core businesses are US direct e commerce business and then if you add on the international
businesses and the B two B businesses which we do online. Uh, it creates you know, quite a large, large annual volume. What's happening with these businesses. And we've been able to hire people because you know, we're in aesting company and the company is also doing well, so you know that tends to attract people. Where we've where we struggle somewhat is just logistically how we ship goods out to customers. We are based in Wisconsin. We have three major facilities there,
and we're a major employer in southern Wisconsin. What you've seen with the labor market as of the last six to nine months is people aren't working as much, so it's been very difficult to entice people. We've given two raises so far this year. We've put on peak um peak incentives for people to come into work, and we've had people working, you know, over time just to get
the goods out the door. What we're we have just made it through our back to school peak, which actually worked out okay for us, and we'll be going into another hiring phase and it will be determined, you know, whether the people that have been getting unemployment and staying home are going to be ready to come back to work because an unemployment stops to day in most places.
I think so, and I hope so. But I have learned in the last year that I don't know when you say you've had to raise wages twice, what are we talking about here? Where are they right now? Depends on your your average. We've raised raised them through between three and four percent in May and another percent and a half just this past month. Um, and obviously starting salaries are over fifteen bucks. So you know, we've been
doing the right thing by the market. Uh. And the market really dictates, you know, what you need to do for the people who have been with you for a long time. Because we're a fifty eight year old company. You know, we've had we've had people that have worked for us for thirty five years and you know, very loyal employees, and you want to make sure that they're happy. Sure, I'm a brit acclimatizing to life in the United States, so I kind of asked this hesitantly, but should we
talk about the holiday seasons approaching? Everyone keeps telling me fast approaching the holiday season? How's it looking from your perspective? I think the holiday season is going to be depended on getting goods here. Um. You know, this would be my forty three Christmas since I graduated college, and everyone gets just a little bit harder. But what we think, and you know, we've seen pretty good demand coming up until now. We haven't seen a huge slowdown in demand.
We think demand is still going to be there and every year, you know, it ends up coming coming around because people always end up going out shopping for for Christmas. I think the people that are going to win, and this is our mentality, are the people that service the customer. If you're servicing the customer, you'll win. Yes, maybe your cost might be a bit higher, but as long as you can serve as a customer and keep them happy and keep them coming back, you'll continue to win as
a brand. How early do you want consumers to order from you for the holiday season? You know, people start now, uh. And we saw it last year, and we saw it for back to school this year. You know, people started early, ordering early and back to school and they started ordering more. Uh. And my sense is the same thing is going to happen this year is that people will shop early and they'll want to buy more because they've had ten up demand and they have good savings right now, and people
will want to spend. I think what's going on in the supply chain and what's going on with getting the goods from the manufacturers to the containers, the containers to the ports, trucking the containers from the ports to the warehouses, and then ultimately getting it out the consumer. That's gonna be the tricky part for this year. And I think, you know, the market knows that obviously. It was in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, you know, and it was in w w D last week talking about,
you know, what's going on in the industry. It's a big deal, and people are working very hard to make sure that they get Jerome Griffic. We're gonna have to leave it there. CEO of lands End joining us on the phone from Long Island, New York,