LTO Chain Aaron’s Doing Better Job of ‘Rationalizing’ Its TV Assortment, Says CFO
Lease-to-own (LTO) retailer Aaron’s in Q3 “saw improving trends in customer deliveries, driven by more effective marketing and promotional activity,” said Douglas Lindsay, president-sales and lease ownership, on a Friday earnings call. The value of the “average ticket” for new…
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LTO customer agreements in Q3 increased sequentially from Q2, “as investments in our new merchandising team are beginning to pay off,” said Lindsay. Aaron’s is “going through a number of initiatives in merchandising,” said Chief Financial Officer Steve Michaels in Q&A. The company hired Steve Olsen as chief merchandising officer in January, said Michaels. Olsen, a onetime inventory control and supply chain executive with Office Depot, “brought a more analytical approach to our merchandising program, some of which is just looking at each product category and making sure we have true good-better-best options for the customer,” he said. Aaron’s also is bringing “more style, more color, more functionality into our mix,” he said. “And it’s not just in furniture. It’s in electronics, and it’s really in sort of rationalizing our computer assortment and TV assortment.”