Chico's FAS Inc.

Financial health and strategic focus of Chico's FAS Inc

Introduction

Chico works in the fashion industry as an exclusive brand. It produce casual to party dresses, complementary accessories, intimates, non-clothing gift items from Chico's White House/Black Market and Soma Intimates brand names. The company operates around 1,151 stores in about 48 states. It also operates its business through e-commerce websites. Apart from all the local stores, Chico works through three websites, which are chicos.com, Whbm.com and soma.com. Its target market is women of 35 years of age or more. The white house/black market focuses on women of 25 years of age. Chico has a strong process of customer interaction. It provides personalized attention to its customer through its system (Chicofas.com).

Key Developments

In the late 2011, Chico announced new $200 million shares for its outstanding common stock. The quarterly cash dividend of $0.05 was also announced per share on its common stock. Chico also acquired the controls of Boston Proper in September, 2011. Boston Proper works in women's apparel and accessories. It also focused on the increase of comparable store sales. The company's e-marketing program facilitates it to appear on banner ads on various highly trafficked websites. The social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter help the company to engage actively with its customers, to provide news regarding brands and merchandise. The public relations and community outreach programs include editor's events, VIP parties, fashion shows and wardrobe parties. These programs will help the company to build and support community and charitable activities also provide an introduction to new customers (Reuters.com).

Financial Health

The initiatives made in 2010 involved achieving more progress and establish a pivotal performance of the company. The goals comprises improvement of performance of Chico's brand, investment in the growth potential of the brands, acceleration in investments and growth of the DTC channel (direct-to-consumer) and control and rationalize expenses and improvement in inventory control. The year of 2010 showed that Chico made remarkable progress and achievements. Chico reaped profits from the penetration of its outlets of other brands. The sales increased to $1.905 billion which increased by 11.2% since 2009 (Hafeez, 2008).

The company recorded revenues of $1,905 million in the financial year ended January 2011 (FY2011), an increase of 11.2% over FY2010. For FY2011, the US, the company's only geographic market, accounted for 100% of the total revenues. Chico's generates revenues through two business segments: Chico's/Soma Intimates (69% of the total revenues in FY2011) and White House/Black Market (31%). During FY2011, the Chico's/Soma Intimates segment ...