Athletic footwear continues strong last week, though we wish we could say the same about apparel. Keep in mind that neither of these datapoints was impacted by the storm. In fact, if anything we could argue that we should has seen some shopping (largely apparel) the days leading up to the storm. Nothing to be alarmed about, but we don't want to see this carry into next week.
As it relates to Brands, Nike was 'steady as she goes' with a high-teens growth rate in sell through. But the big surprise was UnderArmour, with 40%+ top line growth. That's about as good as we've seen from UA since it launched Spine. One of the more troubling performances is Timberland, which has gotten sequentially worse over the past three weeks. One datapoint means little to us - three means a heck of a lot more. We'll look into it and be back to you. But keep this mind as it relates to what we think is an overextended VFC.
