Good evening. Joining me today on our Q1 earnings call are Andi Owen, Chief Executive Officer, Jeff Stutz, Chief Financial Officer, John Michael, President, Americas Contract, Debbie Propst, President, Global Retail, Chris Baldwin, Group President, MillerKnoll, and Kevin Veltman, Senior Vice President, Integration Lead. We have posted the press release on our investor relations website at hermanmiller.com. Wherever any figures are presented on a non-GAAP basis, we have reconciled the GAAP and non-GAAP amounts within the press release. Before I turn it over to Andi for a brief overview of the quarter, I would like to remind everyone that this call will include forward-looking statements. For informational factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements, please refer to the earnings press release, as well as our annual and quarterly SEC filings.
Any forward-looking statements that we make today are based on assumptions as of this date, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, we will have a Q&A session. Today's call is scheduled for 60 minutes. With that, I'll turn the call over to Andi.
Thanks, Antonella. You guys clearly know that I am at home today with my son and my family, so welcome to my world. Good evening. Thank you for joining us. This is an exciting day. We finalized our acquisition of Knoll in the first quarter, and today we are discussing our results as MillerKnoll for the very first time. Herman Miller is doing business as MillerKnoll, and we're seeking shareholder approval at this year's annual meeting to change our name officially to MillerKnoll, Inc. Before I hand the call over to Jeff, I wanted to share a few remarks about our business overall and the progress we're making behind the integration. Jeff will then take you through our financial results in greater detail, including changes to our reporting segments. We started the year with positive momentum and really strong demand around the globe.
Q1 orders grew across every segment of our business. This positive order demand is an indicator of the strength of our business fundamentals as well as our strategy, and it underscores our confidence in the future. Our teams are executing and driving progress against our strategic priorities. Both our retail and contract businesses continue to grow, and we're bringing new customers to our brands with growth initiatives like gaming, store and studio openings, and a growing digital presence around the world and across all of our segments. As MillerKnoll, we're now one of the largest and most influential design companies in the world, positioned to redefine modern design and transform our industry. With a broader portfolio of complementary brands, enhanced scale and capabilities, and the financial strength of our diversified businesses, MillerKnoll is uniquely positioned to imagine and create beautiful design solutions that both endure and inspire.
Since the early days of the integration, our global teams have demonstrated extraordinary operational discipline. They're executing well against our plans, and we're on track to achieve our timeline for delivering $100 million in cost synergies within two years after the close of the deal. One of the key areas of focus for the integration is bringing our two leading contract dealer networks together in the Americas. While there's still a lot of work to do, we've made considerable progress, and I wanted to share a brief update with you. In order to grow our contract business, we must enable our dealers to bring the full capabilities of MillerKnoll and our industry-leading product portfolio to our customers. We'll create a network of MillerKnoll dealers who represent the full collective of all of our brands.
This strategy benefits our dealers by giving them access to the full power of our portfolio, which was a key driver of the deal. They'll have the opportunity to both sell more and also be better positioned to meet the specific needs of each customer. While this work is focused on the MillerKnoll dealer network in the Americas, the strategy also presents new opportunities for our international dealers. Bringing Knoll's amazing portfolio to these markets, in many cases for the first time, unleashes incredible opportunities for growth. This strategy benefits our customers as well by creating the highest performing dealer network with access to the broadest product portfolio in the industry. The MillerKnoll network will have more dealers than either network had on its own, giving our customers more choice both in terms of products and partners.
Creating a MillerKnoll dealer network is not a one-size-fits-all approach and instead requires we work market by market to determine the optimal footprint based on the unique dynamics of each one. We've established the principles we'll use to determine the right distribution model for each market, and we're finalizing the optimal footprint for each of our key markets now. At the same time, we're developing the pilots and processes that will enable us to bring the combined MillerKnoll product portfolio to all of our dealers as soon as possible. This work is proceeding as planned based on our integration timeline and will continue to be a top priority for us through the remainder of the fiscal year. As we've said all along, bringing these two incredible organizations together felt like our destiny. Now that we're on our way, we feel even more strongly that this was meant to be.
Watching our teams from around the world come together to identify and capture the best of each organization while designing the path to our shared future is truly inspiring. We know there is so much tremendous opportunity ahead of us. With that, I'll turn it over to Jeff to give a bit more commentary about the results before we open it up for questions.
Great. Thanks, Andi. I'll start by seconding your comments about the integration. It has been really inspiring to watch this work unfold, and our teams are exceeding our expectations. Given their efforts, we're confident in our ability to deliver on our synergy targets. As we discuss results today, a quick reminder that our reporting segments have changed now that the acquisition is complete. As MillerKnoll, we'll be reporting results under four business segments: Global Retail, which reflects the legacy North America Retail segment and now includes our international retail business. Americas Contract, which reflects the legacy North America Contract segments combined with Latin America and the Design Within Reach contract business. International Contract, which reflects contract business outside the Americas. Knoll, as the acquired Knoll business will initially be reflected as a standalone segment.
Earlier today, we issued a Form 8-K that provides historical information based on these revised segment definitions to assist you in your modeling and your analysis. Onto the numbers. Consolidated net sales of $789.7 million were up 26% from the same quarter last year, which is an increase of approximately 0.4% organically. Now, keep in mind that we're facing a challenging year-over-year comparison due to the elevated backlogs from COVID-related manufacturing and retail studio shutdowns last year. Additionally, our ability to ship orders this quarter was impacted by the supply chain disruptions that our industry is facing. While we do expect this to moderate in time, our outlook for Q2 considers the near-term impact of these pressures. Orders were up 65% over last year or 35% organically. As Andi mentioned, the strong demand was seen across all segments.
Global Retail had another strong quarter, with orders up 22% over the prior year period. The Americas Contract segment saw orders increase by 43% over last year, and international orders were up 35%. Knoll's workplace business also saw positive order momentum, and leading indicators in this business are consistent with what we saw in the Americas business, with the funnel of new projects up 18% and 14% respectively from last year. Knoll's residential business also saw strong order growth in both North America and in Europe. Adjusted gross margin in the quarter was 35.9%, compared to 40% in the prior year period, and was impacted by higher commodity costs and other inflationary pressures. The prior year also reflected favorable channel mix associated with retail activity, operating leverage from working through elevated backlog, and temporary cost reductions as we addressed the challenges of COVID-19.
To be sure, we are actively managing what we can control to address inflationary pressures going forward. We implemented a price increase this quarter and have additional increases planned for the second quarter to help offset these pressures. Adjusted operating margin was 6.2%, compared to 15.3% in the prior year. Similar to net sales, operating margin last year was higher due to shipments of elevated backlog at the beginning of the quarter, favorable channel mix, and the spending reductions we put in place to navigate the pandemic. We reported a net loss per share of $0.93 compared to diluted earnings per share of $1.24 for the same period a year ago. This includes the impact of additional shares issued in the first quarter, as well as $1.42 per share related to non-comparable items. Adjusted earnings per share was $0.49 in the first quarter, compared to $1.24 last year.
Looking ahead to the Q2 , our guidance includes the full impact of Knoll for the quarter. We expect sales in the Q2 to range between $1.025 billion and $1.065 billion, and adjusted earnings per share to be between $0.55 and $0.61. This guidance considers the near-term inflationary and supply chain environment that we're currently experiencing and the actions we're taking to help mitigate these pressures. The strong demand environment and traction from our strategic initiatives positions us well as we look forward. With those opening comments, I'll turn it back over to the operator, and we'll take your questions.
Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Greg Burns with Sidoti & Company . Your line is open.
Yeah. Just first, in terms of the inflationary pressure, what was the amount of the price cost gap this quarter, and what's your line of sight on kind of closing that given the cadence of the price increases you've instituted?
Hi, Greg. Good to be with you. Thanks for the question. Let me maybe take a step back and give you a sense for kind of the year-over-year impact in basis point terms, because this might actually help unpack really the crux of your question. Is that helpful if I do it that way?
Yep.
Okay.
That's great.
Yeah. Without a doubt, the big gross margin pressure we felt came in the form of three inflationary components. Commodities as kind of one basket of impacts, commodity inflation in total eroded gross margins to the tune of about 120 basis points compared to last year. The big factor there was steel, which probably doesn't surprise you, but we saw inflation across almost every material category. The second bucket I would point out, and this is one that affected us more late in the quarter than it did early in the quarter, is freight and delivery charges. You may hear more from us on that as we talk about the segments of the business. In total, freight and delivery, we estimate impacted us negatively by about 70 basis points year-on-year. Then the last component is really a labor-related inflationary impact.
In total labor, in terms of direct labor as well as overhead labor, we estimate with about a 90 basis point impact. Those are the three components. Hopefully, that gives you the color you're looking for.
Yeah. In terms of maybe getting back to price cost neutral.
Yeah
What's your line of sight on closing that gap?
Yeah. Okay. What I would tell you is, I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we, on the legacy Herman Miller side of the business, implemented a price increase back in June. The Knoll business did one, I believe, in May. There are additional increases that have already been announced in October and November, so upcoming. As you know, in the contract side of the business, it takes some time for those to roll and layer themselves into the gross margin. What I would tell you is, at current commodity levels, we are having conversations about whether that's going to be enough. I'll leave it at that, but I would just tell you that at the current elevated levels, that's a discussion we're having internally.
I would expect, as we have seen in the past when we do these price increases, after about three months, you start seeing some incremental benefit from those increases. Again, I'm talking mainly on the contract side of the business. Our guide reflects some of that. It really will be after the first of the calendar year that we start to feel the big impacts or the big benefits from that. The retail business is different, right? We can do pricing on the retail business, and that's a little bit more real time. Debbie and team have looked at that and have actually implemented some of those as well.
Okay. Then on the supply chain issues, I guess there's a $30 million headwind this quarter. Is that what's implied in the guidance? Are you still expecting that type of level of order delays next quarter due to supply chain?
In general terms, yes, Greg. These are not going to abate anytime soon. At least, we certainly don't anticipate those abating in the second quarter. I would say order of magnitude, maybe even a bit more than that because we're going to pick up the Knoll business for an additional six and a half weeks. I would say that's a fair assumption.
Okay. The demand, the order numbers were really strong. I don't remember. I don't know if 750 for the core business is a record number, but it's the highest I think I've seen since I've covered the company. The orders are obviously very strong. Can you just talk about the cadence of the order patterns throughout the quarter, what we've seen.
kind of into the early part of this quarter, and do you think you've seen any pull forward in orders given the number of price increases that you have been instituting?
Greg, I'll start this one and then the business unit leads can chime in if they have some specific commentary around what they think they're seeing in terms of pull-ahead impact. I don't anticipate that there has been much pull ahead into the first quarter, as a general comment. The cadence of orders, we had a pretty strong June right out of the gate. From an organic perspective, the Americas Contract segment started the quarter quite strong. We were positive, maybe not surprisingly when you see the numbers in total, we were positive across all of the business segments in every month of the quarter. In strong double digits, in fact, in every month of the quarter.
I would say the good news is the quarter ended maybe not quite as strong as it started in June, but it picked up from a little bit of a lull in July. We ended the quarter with some pretty good momentum, and that's true across each of the business segments. I don't know, John, if you want to give some color on your thoughts on the balance of his question.
Sure, Jeff. Thank you. I would agree from a pull-ahead perspective, I don't think that we really saw any. I think in June, maybe a little bit of pent-up demand, as return to work was ramping up at that point in time. I think we've seen really through August and the first part of Q2, fairly steady cadence and order patterns so far. That's what we've seen to date.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Rudy Yang with Berenberg. Your line is open.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. First off, you stated that you believe you'll still be able to achieve $100 million of those run rate cost synergies in two years, with some of that coming from procurement and supply chain opportunities. I'm just curious to your thoughts on how current supply chain issues are affecting your ability to realize those synergies and why you kind of remain confident still that your timelines to realize these synergies won't get pushed back at all.
Hey, Rudy. This is Andi. It's a great question. We've done a lot of very, very thorough and intense work on this, and we think a lot of these procurement and supply chain issues are a point in time, and we're certainly not going to take one run at it. We've got a couple of years to get these, and we see opportunity from both scale and reach in our supply base. The more we've looked into it, the more confident we become. We do think it's a difficult environment, and it's a little bit of a moving target. It doesn't deter us from looking at the long term in a 24-month period and feeling very confident in what we can achieve there. I would just point to some of the price cost questions that Greg asked and looking at the supply chain environment in general.
We have a history of operational discipline and efficiency and creativity around these things. We'll continue to apply that in this situation. Kevin Veltman is our integration lead. Kevin, is there anything you would add to that confidence around synergies?
Yeah. I would add on, Rudy, that really since we announced the deal, we've been working on integration planning, and as you might imagine, that's going deep with each team and each business unit to really solidify those plans and think about where the levers of value capture are. We reaffirm and feel more confident about delivering that $100 million within the two years that we've talked about. The mix we expect to be actually pretty similar to what we thought initially, that about 40% of it will come from cost of goods sold and 60% will come from the SG&A side.
Great. Super helpful. Secondly, you guys kind of started to mention a little bit about how you start to integrate the dealer channels together. I guess, is there any more detail you can provide on any expected dis-synergies and how you expect to mitigate this now that you kind of put the plan into action?
Yeah. Rudy, of course, you know, as we did our deal model, we planned on dis-synergies. We don't know where they'll come from, certainly at this point in the plan, but we did put in a hold for those. John Michael, since this is primarily in the Americas, do you want to elaborate a little bit on the dealer network?
Sure, Andi. Thank you. I think in terms of mitigating some of the dis-synergies, a couple things that we've done. Number one, we're taking direction from both customers and influencers, as well as dealers. We've surveyed more than 500 customers over the last 60 days. We've had in-depth conversations with specifiers, and we've leaned into the dealer councils of both Herman Miller and Knoll to make sure that we understand concerns, that we're hearing what the issues are, and we're responding appropriately. I think our overall attitude and mindset is we've got to be sure that we're providing a value proposition to our dealer network, so that they are aligned and really leaning into the power of what MillerKnoll can be. I think, working together with them and working through the issues and being good listeners and then responding is key to mitigating the dis-synergies.
Got it. Last one from me. You said your net leverage ratio, including expected synergies, is around 2.3 times right now. I guess, is there any change to what your target ratio is going to be and your timeline for delevering towards that?
Rudy, this is Jeff. No. No change. Certainly, we are super focused on managing costs given the margin pressures that we're facing and the resulting impact on cash flow. We continue to believe that we can delever to the target level one year forward from the close of the deal. Nothing at this point has thrown us off of that.
Great. Thanks so much, Jeff.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Steven Ramsey with Thompson Research. Your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon, good evening. I guess I wanted to clarify my understanding on this. The organic growth. Can you maybe talk about the organic growth of Knoll? 12% for just Herman Miller, or did that include Knoll's organic growth? Maybe can you clarify that for me?
Hey, Jeff, do you want to start with that one, and then maybe we can turn it over to Chris?
Yeah, what I had alluded to earlier was order growth. Steven, is this a revenue growth question?
No, I'm sorry. That order growth, yes.
Again, I just want to make sure I'm answering your question. Is this a year-over-year order growth question?
Correct. Yes. I'm trying to get a feel for Herman Miller's organic growth and Knoll's organic growth, if that makes sense?
Got it.
Maybe I'll take a stab at it this way. If you look at the legacy Herman Miller side of the business for the full quarter, order growth was on the order of 36% consolidated year-on-year, with just the Herman Miller components across the three legacy segments. Now, bear in mind, we had Knoll for a partial quarter. I think for the six and a half weeks that we had consolidated Knoll into the group, the order growth for that period of time was about 29%. On a pro forma basis, if you just look back and count the entirety of Q1 and compare that to the same period in prior year, I think the Knoll order growth was on the order of 25%. Does that help?
That does. Yes. Okay. Thank you for clarifying.
Sure.
I wanted to think for a minute on Global Retail margins. I guess, what do you think of as a fair margin level for retail? With the impacts of inflation and investments going on right now, I guess, how do you see this evolving over the next 12 to 24 months as, hopefully, inflation moderates over that time? I guess, how long do you expect elevated levels of growth investments over that time frame, and maybe how to think about margins evolving?
Hi, Steven. Thanks for the question. This is Debbie. Our margin rate in the Global Retail business for the quarter came in at 43.7%, this is versus last year's 47.7%. The elements that were impacting that margin depreciation from last year, in order of impact, are product costs, which is driven by the raw material increases and labor increases that Jeff already spoke to, shipping costs, inbound freight, and category mix. The category mix was actually a marginal piece of that margin trend. From an OpEx perspective, most of our increases over last year in OpEx are driven by variable selling increases, occupancy is associated with new stores, and comp and benefits. As you know, we're making multiple investments in this business, and we'll continue to do so for the next 12 to 18 months.
As we rectify our infrastructure to support the business model we're running today. The infrastructure we're running this business on was built for a very different business model, one that was very analog and showroom driven. As we've moved to an omni-brand, omni-channel model, we need a much more robust and dynamic infrastructure to support this business in a scalable way and in a way that continues to enhance our customer experience. We'll be continuing to make those investments over the next 12 to 18 months. As we said in our release, we expect to see operating income in the low to mid-teens while we're making these investments.
Steven, just to add, thank you, Debbie. In the longer run, this is a business where we see us normalizing in the mid to high teens from an operating margin standpoint. Debbie's point, the investments that we're making, we see those on a much shorter term, 12 to 18 months.
Okay.
Go ahead. Continue. Sorry.
Oh, no. I was just saying that's very helpful. I didn't mean to cut you off, but that's super helpful. That does it for me. Thank you.
Thank you, Steven.
Thank you, Steven.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Reuben Garner with Benchmark. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good evening, everybody.
Hey, Reuben. Are you getting any sleep? Congratulations.
Thank you. I appreciate it. No, not a ton of sleep yet, but I think we're getting there. Just to start off, a clarification. Andi, I think you mentioned multiple choices in a single market from the dealers and how you're going to go to market with Herman Miller and Knoll. Maybe it's too early to answer this, and obviously, if you haven't communicated the strategy with the dealers, you can't tell us yet, but how is this going to work? Are the Knoll dealers going to sell both Knoll and Herman Miller product now? Do they have access to everything? Is it going to be by market how that decision's made, or is Knoll going to sell Knoll and Herman Miller's going to sell Herman Miller for a period of time? What does that look like?
These are all excellent questions, Reuben, and the answer to all of them is yes. We will have one dealer network, and every dealer will sell all of Miller and all of Knoll. We will be bringing them all together so that they can basically offer our entire portfolio. Part of the work there is that we've taken both dealer networks and done extensive and exhaustive interviews with our customers, as John Michael spoke to earlier, as well as with our dealers, looked at the size of the markets, determined which markets support how many dealers, which markets don't, and we've been working on a market-by-market basis with the network to determine what's the right number of dealers in every market. That is a lengthy process.
We have to be very thoughtful, and we have to have a very tailored approach to make sure that we land the right assortment. John Michael, you're much closer to this, so I don't know what you would like to add.
I think that was well said, Andi. I think, Reuben, just to clarify it, to reaffirm what Andi said. One MillerKnoll network selling the full collective of brands, really a tailored approach by market. You mentioned, at the start of your question, multiple dealers in a market, both Knoll pre the deal and Herman Miller had markets with multiple dealers in them. That's not a new phenomenon in any way. We know how to navigate those situations and make sure that it's beneficial for all the parties involved.
We're very actively involved in going through that process right now and working on, obviously, a number of different initiatives, not only to establish the dealer footprint, but then also set up the infrastructure so that they are all fully trained and ready and have the tools that they need to represent all the brands well in the marketplace.
Okay. Just to be clear, today, if I was a company going in to buy office furniture from one of your dealers, either Knoll or Herman Miller's legacy dealers, would they be able to buy product from both, the entire MillerKnoll suite of products?
Not quite yet.
Okay.
We're in a beta test situation right now where we're working on the mechanics of how that will all flow. Our intent is by the middle of 2022 that all those pieces will be in place. Then we'll be able to do what you said. Each dealer will be able to represent all the brands.
The good news there.
All right, perfect.
Reuben, you know this, all of our dealers sell things from multiple manufacturers today. Ordering from a variety of manufacturers is not a new thing for them. Really for us, the focus is on how we enable them from a back-of-house standpoint, how we provide them with the right training on both product portfolios so that their dealer salespeople and designers can get up to speed as quickly as possible. I think I can look at my leadership team and say, this is our number one priority right now, we want to get after it as quickly as we can.
Understood. Helpful. Thank you. On the supply chain, I think back of the envelope here implies that there's a pretty nice ramp-up in your business across MillerKnoll altogether from the current quarter to next quarter, at least on the top line. It sounds like there's still going to be supply chain headwinds. Can you help me understand how you go from, say, $900 million-$ 950 million in revenue? Maybe that's not the right number with a full quarter of Knoll Incorporated up to something like $100 million higher sequentially. Do you guys not have any capacity constraints on your end, and it's simply just an inability to get the materials you need on time and the trucks you need on time?
I guess if it was tough to do that at $900 million of revenue, what has to happen for you to go to north of $1 billion?
Well, Reuben, this is Jeff. Let me just make sure we're not talking past each other on this point. Bear in mind, we had Knoll in our consolidated results for six and a half weeks, right? We're moving from six and a half weeks, where we took orders on the consolidated basis of just over $900 million, to a full 13 weeks of order entry on the Knoll side as well as the legacy Miller side. The Q1 to Q2, right, is not apples to apples because you're going to end up having a lot more Knoll volume just by virtue of the fact that you've got six and a half more weeks of activity. I'm going to pause there.
Yeah. Jeff.
Yep.
Yeah, Jeff, the $900 million I was referencing, I was trying to layer in another six and a half weeks of Knoll shipments that you might have had. I'm just guessing that if you had Knoll for the whole quarter, your revenue this quarter might have been something north of $900, and now you've got to go from $900 of revenue to over $1 billion next quarter. I'm trying to see how you go from this quarter to next quarter, where the incremental capacity comes from. Maybe you don't have capacity constraints, and it's on the material side.
No, we have capacity constraints. Those are not immediately going away. Our operations teams have done great work mitigating a lot of the pressure, so they're still dealing with them, but we are moving the needle, if you will, in terms of our ability to improve throughput. That's true in our domestic U.S. operations. It's also true internationally. One of the things I'll point out is that we had COVID-related closures in a particular key market, actually in India. That was a drag on the throughput activity within the International Contract business, and it was one of those factors that limited revenue. There's a number of things here. We do think we're going to see a ramp-up in our ability to produce and ship in Q2, and that's all reflected in the guide.
Yeah. Also remember, Reuben, we're going into this quarter with a really strong backlog, and I would say material availability was really more of a constraint than labor, and I'm not going to say that our labor challenges are not there because I think they're there macroeconomically, but we are starting to see a little bit of progress there. If that helps answer that.
Yes, it does. Last question from me, I want to sneak one more in. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Knoll, when it was a standalone, maybe there was some footprint consolidation going on. Does the current demand environment and constraints that you're having maybe change the outlook on any footprint consolidation? Maybe I'm behind the curve, and those actions have already been made. I guess, have you rethought any of the moves that are happening either related to the integration or at either company from a standalone perspective?
Yeah.
Hey, Reuben. Oh, sorry. This is Baldwin.
Go ahead, Chris.
Just to speak on the Knoll side. I think part of your question is did the consolidation already occur on the Knoll side? The answer is yes.
Okay.
That already happened. That already went down a facility, which has been great from a cost standpoint and also no impact to production capability from that, obviously, the supply chain issues notwithstanding that are more general. That's already taken place, there's no need to put anything on hold because it's complete. When it comes to the integration work, I can let Kevin talk about that's a fresh look that there's really no current plans to close any facility. It's really work around procurement and things that Kevin talked about to achieve our $100 million by 2 years.
Great. Thanks, guys. Appreciate all the help and good luck going forward.
Thanks, Reuben.
Thanks, Reuben.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Fuhrman with Craig-Hallum Capital. Your line is open.
Great. Thanks very much for taking my question. Congratulations on the Knoll integration here. Wanted to ask about the retail business. Obviously, there's been a lot of conversation on the call about your corporate business, rightfully so. Now with the new reportable segments, it looks like Global Retail is more than 25% of your sales, on its way presumably to 30%. Can you talk more about the strategy for this segment going forward? Specifically, I'm curious how your initial Herman Miller seating stores have been performing as we've been moving farther away from the depths of last year's lockdowns, if you think there's an opportunity to continue opening new stores under the flagship brand in the years ahead.
Yeah, Alex, no, I'm going to turn this over to Debbie, our President, Global Retail, but I would say our retail strategy has been bearing fruit. I think we were very thoughtful in how we thought about our direct-to-consumer business, and that we knew that one of our sweet spots was our ability to deliver a healthy and ergonomic seating to a wider variety of folks. With the hybrid work environment that we see, our Herman Miller seating stores have been very successful, and we see the continuation of that growth in our retail business. I also think that we are really just at the beginning of what our retail business could be.
Debbie is an experienced and amazing retail leader, and I think having her eyes on the business and looking at it differently from a growth perspective really will enable us to grow around the globe with the different brands that we have underneath the retail umbrella. Debbie, let me just turn it over to you for a quick bit on the strategy.
Thanks, Andi. I'd say our number 1 priority is first and foremost optimizing for omni-channel customer journeys, ensuring that our brands show up in a consistent way from an experience standpoint in whichever channel the customer wants to engage with us in. In addition to that, we have strategies by brand. We're running a portfolio of retail brands with different growth levers within each. For example, within Design Within Reach, the primary growth lever we've been driving has been assortment expansion, where a non-comp unit quarter-on-quarter is driving the bulk of our growth. Within Herman Miller, our expansion strategy has been around improving awareness of the benefits of sitting well, and we've been doing that through omni-channel touch points with the customers, with our performance seating stores being a critical element of that.
We've been continually impressed by the type of four-wall profitability we've been seeing from those small format locations, that are obviously a substantially smaller investment to open up and get into than some of our legacy retail footprints. We opened additional three locations within Q1, and since Q1 ended, we've opened two more. We're now at a total of 11, with the goal to continue to pace openings at a similar rate throughout the balance of the fiscal year. From an additional perspective, obviously HAY is a brand that is younger in its awareness in North America, and we're focusing on assortment strategies there so that we can be a dependable and well-rounded resource for home decorating.
That's terrific. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have a follow-up from the line of Greg Burns. Your line is open.
Thanks. Just to follow up on some of the commentary around seating. When we think about offices reopening and the prior growth around home office, work from home, how does that change now that offices are reopening? Are you seeing the demand levels for home office, home seating change at all? Secondly, could you just touch on the accretion you saw from Knoll this quarter? Is that kind of what we should expect going forward? Thanks.
Debbie, why don't you take the first part, and then Jeff, the second.
Absolutely. Well, I'm very happy to say that our workspace category in the Retail channel continues to grow over last year, despite triple-digit comps this time last year. I think one of the elements that's driving that is the sort of pandemic positioning that this product is a wellness product and it improves your overall work-life balance and health benefits. If we can position the product in that way, which is a way that this product has not traditionally been positioned in the category, that allows us to drive momentum beyond pandemic trends.
I also think, as you remember, Jeff, sorry, just before you bring in, we can't forget our gaming business, which is also part of our seating business, which has been phenomenally successful. Just to remind you all, that's a $159 billion market that we have just scratched the surface of. I think with our innovation around that category, we'll continue to see growth there. It is a multidimensional category. It is beyond just work from home. It also encompasses a variety of other uses. Jeff, sorry, the Knoll question.
Yeah, no. Good commentary. Greg, your question on the accretion. You can imagine, we were pleased to, right out of the gates with a partial quarter, to see some EPS accretion from the acquisition. What I would caution is, bear in mind, we didn't reflect a full quarter drag of the weighted average share count. I would expect
that in the coming quarters, you're going to see the impact of the Knoll integration when you factor in, of course, the higher debt borrowing costs and share count to be close to neutral, maybe a slight drag on earnings per share in the short run. We continue to be believers that, stick with our point of view from the announcement date, which was on a cash basis, meaning adjusting for the acquisition- related to amortization. We think that the deal can be accretive after one full year and on a GAAP basis after two years. That's my continued expectation, and I'd stick with that.
Just one more in terms of some of the forward-looking metrics you discussed in terms of pipeline of orders, mock-ups, and things like that. It doesn't sound like you've seen any slowdown due to Delta and things getting pushed out. We've seen a lot of headlines of businesses pushing out their return-to-office plans. One of your other competitors did have some more cautious comments around that, like they were seeing a little bit of a slowdown in some of those areas. Can you just talk to that and just generally, have you seen any impact of COVID with the conversations you have with your customers?
I'll let JM and Chris weigh in on this, but I would say overall, projects pushing are not an unusual thing in our business. I think in the last couple of years, COVID has been a little bit of push and pull across the world. We have seen some things push, but we've seen some things push from quarters into this quarter as well. Ultimately, the big point for us, Greg, is that we're not seeing cancellations. That's really encouraging. The demand is increasing because people are really thinking differently about their environment. With vaccines and masks, I think people have a lot more confidence this year than they did last about bringing people together in different ways. We're encouraged. Certainly, Delta throws us a curve ball and will continue to.
Cancellations are what we really look for as the canary in the coal mine, and we have not seen those. John Michael, would you add anything to that?
I would just say that in terms of clients that we were working with that were perhaps going to return in September, October, some have pushed to, say, January, and some of the January original dates have pushed, say, to March. The pushes have been 60-90 days, not months and months. The other thing that I think that as the market and as customers have evolved and figured out how to navigate with COVID is, if you think about this time last year, there was a lot of uncertainty, but there was uncertainty about, are we going back to the office, and what's the importance of the office? There is no uncertainty around that anymore, right? People really acknowledge, understand that collaboration and connection and culture and innovation and heads-down work all need to happen in a destination place that's attractive to employees.
Our customers understand that, and they are seeking that, and we're helping them with that. The timing's moving around a little bit, but the demand is still there.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you. I'm showing no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the call back over to Andi for closing remarks.
Great. Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us today. We really appreciate.