Good afternoon. My name is Tom Chubb, and I'm the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Oxford. We appreciate very much all you guys being here. We're honored that you took time this afternoon to learn more about our company. Before I begin the actual presentation, let me take care of a few preliminary matters. First, we have our safe harbor statement. You can find a copy of the presentation, including the safe harbor statement, on our website at oxfordinc.com. I want to briefly introduce to you the other Oxford team members that are here with me today. The first two people are well-known by many of you. Scott Grassmyer, who serves as our Chief Financial Officer. Raise your hand there please, Scott, just in case anybody doesn't know him.
Anne Shoemaker, who serves as our Treasurer, and as you know, they do most of the heavy lifting on our investor relations efforts. Also with me today, these are sort of the stars of the show today, are the leaders of our four operating groups. Doug Wood from Tommy Bahama, Michelle Kelly from Lilly Pulitzer. Guess which one she is. Chris Heyn from Southern Tide, and Wesley Howard from Lanier Apparel. We've also got a couple other team members with us today. We have Rob Goldberg from Tommy Bahama. Rob, raise your hand in the back. Jamie Paradise from Lilly Pulitzer. Rob Iorio from Southern Tide. In the way back there, Bobby Marino from Lanier Apparel. Michael Parker from Lanier Apparel. Tom Campbell, Raj Palakshappa, and Jevon Strasser, all from our Atlanta corporate group, if you guys will raise your hand.
With the preliminaries out of the way, I'll now jump into the presentation itself and start by giving you a roadmap of what we hope to accomplish today. The principal objective of today's presentation is to tell you why and how we think our company can continue to grow and thrive going forward. We'll start by giving you a big-picture understanding of the story of our company and our strategy for delivering long-term shareholder value. Secondly, we want to introduce you to the brands, the businesses, and very importantly, the people that are helping us bring that strategy to life. If we accomplish those two things today, we will have achieved our purpose for this meeting. Oxford has achieved a rare degree of longevity and relevance in our industry.
It started in 1942, when three brothers who were in the dictating machine business bought a private label shirt company. For the next several decades, they continued to grow the business by acquisition and an occasional disposition. The company went public in 1960 and then listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1964. It is interesting to note that of the more than 2,000 companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange, there are actually only 152 companies that have been listed for longer than Oxford has. Oxford is a company with great heritage, which is all well and good. Of course, the question that we all really want to know is: what does the future hold? I would submit that the culture we have always fostered and that has allowed us to prosper in the past will also serve us very well going forward.
That culture is reflected in a handful of key characteristics. These are foundational strengths across the organization that have enabled us to succeed for 74 years. They are the same characteristics that will help drive our success going forward. During the company's almost 75-year history and my own 28-year history at Oxford, starting as a summer intern in 1988, the world, our industry, and our company have changed pretty dramatically. That said, some things have remained rock-solid constants at Oxford. One is our unwavering focus on adapting to those changes to deliver long-term value to our shareholders. In that phrase, perhaps the two most important words are long-term, because that's the way we manage our company, for the long term and for the shareholders. We focus on sustained profitable growth to make sure we will fulfill that basic promise.
Our strategy for delivering that sustained profitable growth has been to manage a dynamic portfolio, meaning that we are willing to use our balance sheet and our cash flow to add to the portfolio. Responding to change also requires that when necessary, we subtract from our stable of businesses to ensure that the total portfolio can deliver profitable growth. For the last decade or so, we have attempted to do that by focusing primarily on owning and developing powerful emotional brands. At present, this approach has resulted in our owning a portfolio of four businesses. Three of these businesses are built around powerful lifestyle brands that through differentiated, innovative products and compelling brand storytelling, emotionally connect consumers to happy times and happy places. I'm going to pause just for a minute and let our slideshow get back in sync with where I am. Okay.
The fourth business is a highly competent and versatile platform on which we can grow smaller brands. Together, we believe this portfolio is well-positioned to drive profitable growth going forward. While past performance is certainly no guarantee of future success, we do believe that it demonstrates that our approach is a good one. Here you have the scorecard. As you can see, we have dramatically transformed our business, more than doubling gross margin and doubling operating margin. Finally, and very importantly, during the period of our transformation, the S&P 500 delivered a total shareholder return of 196%, while Oxford delivered a TSR of 648%. I would humbly submit that our strategy has worked. Another constant that has helped drive our success for many years and will help drive our success going forward is our focus on having the best people in the industry.
We pride ourselves on our ability to attract, develop, and retain some of the very best and brightest people in the fashion, apparel, and retail sector. Today, we're thrilled beyond words that you're gonna have the opportunity to meet four of these incredible people and learn a bit more about the brands and the businesses that they run. We're gonna start with Tommy Bahama. Back in 2000, a private equity firm purchased a stake in Tommy Bahama. At the time, Tommy Bahama was a successful, vibrant, highly entrepreneurial business. Soon after they bought into Tommy Bahama, the private equity firm did a very, very smart thing. They recruited Doug Wood from the aerospace and telecom industries to professionalize the team and the operations so that the business could fully capitalize on the potential for profitable growth provided by its brand and products.
Oxford acquired Tommy Bahama in 2003. Doug's talents and strengths were immediately obvious to us. Doug assumed responsibility for all aspects of Tommy Bahama's finance and operations. Doug was also the visionary behind Tommy Bahama's very successful e-commerce business. In 2008, when the founders of Tommy Bahama retired, we brought in Terry Pillow as CEO, who had most recently worked at Polo Ralph Lauren. Doug was named president. Doug worked in equal partnership very successfully with Terry for the next eight years. During that period, Doug and Terry led the business through the necessary cultural and organizational changes to transform Tommy Bahama from a wholesale-led business to a retail-led business. With Terry's retirement at the beginning of 2016, we were delighted to have Doug assume the role of CEO of Tommy Bahama. Doug?
As you just heard, I'm Doug Wood. I am the CEO of Tommy Bahama. It is my pleasure to be here today to talk to you about one of the premier lifestyle brands in America. Tommy Bahama is the island-inspired lifestyle brand that defines relaxed, sophisticated style. I'm gonna start with a quick video that I love because it does a beautiful job illustrating how Tommy Bahama celebrates fashion, food, and friends.
Feeling right, you're coming up
I'm sorry you got to be here versus there. Everything we do starts at the same place, our mission: to create an exceptional island lifestyle that inspires you to relax. We use this simple idea to stay disciplined, focused, elevated, and aligned. What makes Tommy Bahama such a special brand is our ability to straddle the two worlds of relaxed and elevated. Many have tried to imitate Tommy Bahama. It's a delicate balance of hitting the right notes with the right assets to make it work. We know that the combination of great product and powerful brand message is what our loyal following has come to expect from us. We got our start nearly 25 years ago as a niche upscale men's brand focused entirely on the resort space. In Tommy Bahama, the fit, fabrication, and attitude of the garments are always relaxed and sophisticated.
While we are never far from our roots, today we are a dual-gender lifestyle brand with a true four-season offering that is relevant in every market. This, coupled with unique, colorful prints that are created in-house, is sure to put the wearer in an island state of mind no matter where you are. While apparel is the center of our business, the non-apparel items in the 25 different product categories gives the brand context and brings a richness to the way we capture the lifestyle. These carefully selected products reflect the Tommy Bahama brand message of "Make life one long weekend." From the most popular branded beach chair in the world to the elevated barbecue accessories to paddle boards, there's a brand imprint that very deliberately says, "Relax." We think that the highest compliment a guest can pay us is to invite us into their home.
With that in mind, we offer a variety of home decor and entertaining products so our guests can turn their homes into restful, island-inspired retreats. There's a complete furniture collection, bedding, bath, tabletop, fabric, and wall coverings to name just a few. The Tommy Bahama guest can bring a slice of the islands into their home as a reminder of our approach to living. You may have noticed that I refer to our consumer as our guest, this is a point of view that we take seriously at Tommy Bahama, and it permeates every aspect of our business. Since the beginning, we've always considered ourselves in the hospitality business. We think of ourselves as those great friends you have that own a beach house that love to entertain, so it's natural for us to think of them as guests.
Today, we have approximately 2.8 million guests in our database, we have taken great care to learn as much as we can about them. I'd like to share some of the demographics. Our guest is slightly more likely to be a woman. They're educated, affluent, and is interested in culture, arts, gourmet food, wine, and international travel. At the core, you'll find extreme loyal enthusiasts that have an emotional connection and draw inspiration from Tommy Bahama to reflect their own personalities. This is a highly desirable population, how we communicate with this guest and encourage them to active participants in our brand is critical to our success. Our website itself and beautiful catalogs are central to our communication. In 2015, we sent 6 million direct mail pieces and more than 200 million individual emails to our guests.
We had over 2 billion impressions on air, in print, and through the web. In addition, bloggers, social media will continue to play a larger role in the Tommy Bahama marketing plan. We have developed fully integrated campaigns that tie every consumer touchpoint to baseline messaging and calls to action. When our guests think of Tommy Bahama, they think of an exotic destination, not a store in a mall, as they do with other retailers. Our 16 restaurants play a key role in how we communicate that image to our guests. The picture here is our very first Tommy Bahama store in Naples, Florida, opened almost 20 years ago, it included not only a retail store, but an island-inspired restaurant that showcases the brand in 3D. There's nothing more powerful in terms of communicating precisely who we are than the complete sensory experience of one of our restaurants.
From food to decor to music and plateware, we carry that same message of relax and escape for our guests to enjoy. There's nothing like a couple of drinks, dinner, and some shopping at the Tommy Bahama Naples to make a consumer fall in love with the brand forever. Let's simply consider this fact. In a typical freestanding store, guests will spend 15 or 20 minutes engaged with a brand. But in one of our islands, they will spend 2 to two and a half hours fully immersed in the Tommy Bahama experience. I know many of you have frequented our beautiful store and restaurant just a few blocks away. If you haven't, please take some time to drop in, shop, dine, and share a drink with us.
Far from cookie-cutter in both design and merchandising, our stores reflect and meet the needs of our guests in 168 locations worldwide. While our roots are in warm weather, our assortment takes a year-round approach, drawing from a relaxed attitude that is expressed in our design. We continue to innovate and introduce new store formats, including stores with a smaller footprint that are working well. It's no secret that the way that consumers shop in general is shifting every day. They no longer discern between online and brick-and-mortar as in years past, that has required us to approach retailing with that same mindset. The digital platform we've built has proven to be one of the strongest, most dynamic tools to keep us current, topical, and relevant. Last year, we had over 14 million visitors to our website and millions more engaged in our social media.
Our digital platform provides a window to the world of our evolving offerings and allows us to not only make larger seasonal changes, but also more subtle, nuanced adjustments within a season or a campaign. As our direct-to-consumer business has grown over the years to more than 75%, it has allowed us to take control of the narrative rather than relying on third-party sellers to tell our story. We think that now more than ever, to have control of the brand and all the associated messaging is the only way to win in the long term. That said, by partnering with the right wholesalers, we can further our reach with less associated overhead.
Our wholesale offering of Tommy Bahama products is sold in over 2,000 stores, and we're in an all-door proposition with Nordstrom and in select doors in other fine department stores and in hundreds of better specialty stores. We tie this all together with powerful technology. This is always evolving, and we're constantly focused on ensuring that we have the right systems to run our business and provide outstanding service for our guests. None of this works without people, and we have a fantastic team that is well-balanced with Tommy Bahama veterans and extraordinary new talent. We have a dynamic leadership team that brings a broad cross-section of experience to Tommy Bahama. We are laser-focused on what we think will drive the company for many years to come. Our team understands the privilege of serving the guest and the responsibility to protect and shepherd the brand.
In every aspect of Tommy Bahama business, whether it's product, distribution, or communication, we try to inspire you to relax. In doing so, we convey that the Tommy Bahama brand is about more than just product, but is truly about adopting the island state of mind. Thank you for letting me talk to you today.
Thank you, Doug. It's with pleasure that I now introduce you to Michelle Kelly, Group CEO of Lilly Pulitzer. After completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia, Michelle spent a couple of years at McKinsey. She went back to school to earn her MBA from Harvard, which is where Jim Bradbeer and Scott Beaumont, the now-retired co-owners of Lilly Pulitzer, first met her. Michelle joined Lilly in 2005 in the wholesale area, and through the years, took on responsibility for marketing, merchandising, retail, and was the principal architect of Lilly's e-commerce and social media strategy. In 2015, she was promoted to the role of President and assumed responsibility for all facets of the Lilly business. Very importantly, she transitioned the organizational structure and team from a founder-led enterprise to a professionally managed business with talented senior executives responsible for each key area and function.
Back in 2010, before Oxford acquired Lilly, Jim and Scott made sure that I personally had face time with Michelle. In that first meeting with her, it was very clear to me why Jim and Scott viewed her as the future of the brand. We spent the last several years focused on preparing Michelle and her team for Jim and Scott's retirement. In April of this year, she became Lilly's Group CEO. Obviously, she was more than ready, we're thrilled to have her leading this extraordinary business. Michelle?
Thank you, Tom. Hello, all. My name is Michelle Kelly. I am the very proud CEO of the Lilly Pulitzer Group of Oxford. Thank you for being here today. How many of you know the story of the Lilly Pulitzer brand? Okay, good. We have several. Excellent. I will share it again because it is one of the best stories in fashion history and entrepreneurship. Our brand has an authentic story of an incredible woman who lived during a remarkable time in a beautiful place and created something fabulous. We are one of the very few fashion brands today that has a truly authentic story. We have a short video that explains the highlights.
Legend has it that on January 9th, 1878, a Spanish ship carrying 20,000 coconuts ran aground off the coast of Florida. Coconuts washed ashore and were planted up and down the island, and soon there were coconut palms everywhere. Multimillionaire businessman Flagler would come to Florida in 1892 and he fell in love with Palm Beach. He opened magnificent hotels, and the elite started flocking to Florida. Early fashion trends for visitors were lightweight and travel-themed. They had a nautical theme and were often white and navy. In 1928, the New York Times announced the fifth fashion season, the Palm Beach season. In the late '50s, Lilly Pulitzer hit the scene. This changes American resort wear forever. Lilly's husband, Peter Pulitzer, owned quite a few citrus groves in the area, and in order to keep busy, Lilly opened a juice stand in Via Mizner, just off Worth Avenue.
Her clothes were getting ruined by juice stains, so Lilly had her dressmaker create a printed shift dress just for her, and that was that. Lilly and her friends, like Jackie Kennedy, started wearing the bold, rebellious printed shifts, and resort fashion was never the same. Soon Lilly was selling more dresses than juice, and the rest is history. Today, Lilly Pulitzer is a multimillion-dollar brand with over one million very bright consumers. We have a clear strategy: to be the best in the world at Lilly's resort chic accessories and apparel inspired by Lilly's optimistic Palm Beach lifestyle. We have a very unique brand positioning. Lilly's resort chic is authentic resort wear born in Palm Beach, ignited by the spontaneous bohemian spirit of Lilly Pulitzer. We create Resort 365. With that, getting started.
Lilly Pulitzer, the woman, was a pioneer in fashion and retail. Her original personality, optimistic view of the world, and eye for making women look and feel great are inherent in our company DNA today. Our strategy today is to be the best in the world at resort chic apparel and accessories inspired by Lilly's optimistic Palm Beach lifestyle. We focus on three distinct elements for our customers. We aim to deliver excellence, A+, in product, communications, and distribution. We focus on delighting our consumer. Delighting our consumer translates to pretty incredible conversion rates in both our stores and online, high frequency, and strong retention. Our brand has a multigenerational consumer base, meaning we outfit her for her entire life and her entire day when living the resort lifestyle. We have a strong core consumer, very strong, and a really steady influx of new consumers to the brand.
When she finds us, she comes back. She's connected to this brand, and that will be a theme you'll hear about. It starts with thoughtful and excellent resort product. We have a very talented product team led by our executive vice president, who lives in Palm Beach. She is truly living the resort lifestyle. We design and create fashion for the morning-till-midnight needs of the resort lifestyle. The opportunity just in resort wear is still incredibly large. The category has global relevance, and we have room to grow while still defining our category quite narrowly. Our print designs are a very special part of what we do. Who can recognize a Lilly print from afar? You know it when you see one.
Lilly has had a team of artists creating her signature prints for almost 60 years. We have one of the most iconic, visually identifiable styles of print in the industry. We carry on her legacy with a wonderful team of in-house print designers who create custom original works of art. We also custom-develop most of our colors, whereas most fashion houses purchase prints and colors from the open market. This gives us an incredible advantage in protecting our own distinct look. Each of our prints is a copyrighted original work of art. As print is one of our key differentiators in the market, we constantly focus on innovating in print design and production. We are leaders in some of the new technology that is out there. We recently invested in having a digital printer in-house. This has really increased our pace of innovation.
It allows us to see our custom colors and prints within hours and have them in garment form in a day. That absolutely beats a traditional sample turnaround. We have an incredible team of fabric, color, and trim research and development associates who are focused on innovating within fabric that is relevant and perfect for vacation wear. They figure out how to print our bright, happy colors on these fabrics. We are playing to win when it comes to print and color. One of the fabrics I am most proud of is our UPF 50 printed knit that we launched last year. We are expanding upon it as we speak. We know our customer loves the sun and needs this protection in fashion-forward, chic styles dipped in our color and print.
We love to say, "It's always sunny somewhere." From a fashion perspective, we design and innovate constantly to make sure we have the most chic, most relevant styles to make our customer look incredible and to complete her resort day. Lilly's original style was the shift dress. We are known today for the classic shift silhouette. We create exceptional dresses. In the past 5 years, we have unlocked sportswear and knit dressing that has added significant growth. We see the customer style preferences shifting to more ease and comfort. We are developing polished, pulled-together styles in a way that makes her feel comfortable and seem carefree. Our fashion styles, like this two-piece outfit, have had very high sell-throughs. She is loving the top of our fashion pyramid.
Innovating in the resort space is what we have been doing for 50-plus years. We always challenge ourselves to do it in the most modern way possible. Our consumer is connected to the brand and drawn to our product design. We deliver a high perceived value within each item. We use dressmaker details like custom trims, lining, classic Lilly laces, and custom hardware. We do this to light her up and enforce our heritage product. We do have strong margins, which we love, primarily because it is a signal of how much value we have been able to create through our designs. We focus on protecting this through innovative designs and a general focus on full-price sales. She knows she needs to get her Lilly. It's worth every penny at full price. A-plus distribution. This is what we call our shopping experience.
Our goal is to connect our products with our consumers in the best way possible. We have a modern distribution model to get our product in the hands of the consumer, where she is and when she wants it. We have a compelling direct-to-consumer model that aims to achieve synergies between our company stores and our digital shopping experience. We also have tremendous wholesale partners who build this brand with us every day and present the brand in locations or in ways we are not able to do ourselves. Our signature store program in particular is a strong pillar of our wholesale business. We'll talk a little bit more about them. We focus on digital everything. E-commerce is the top of the list. We have a compelling matrix of desktop, mobile, web, and app commerce that allows Lilly girls to get the full story and shop easily.
In addition to our own platforms, we have a strong business with e-commerce leaders such as Amazon and Nordstrom. We see continued upside to these relationships. We operate 38, soon to be 39, company stores. We plan on opening five to six in 2017. One of our favorite stats around our stores is our very healthy sales per square foot of over $800. It's incredible. We want to bring our unique point of view to even more consumers. We believe there are more untapped resort markets for us to deliver Lilly in and see this growth continue. Who has been into one of our stores? Excellent. Good. They are special. We use our key competitive advantage of print to bring Lilly's resort chic to life and deliver a one-of-a-kind experience to our consumer.
When we open in a new market, it's not uncommon to see lines for the dressing rooms because she wants her picture taken inside. This builds the emotional connection and delights our consumer. We connect this in-store experience with online delight. Have your picture taken in our dressing room because you love the print, download our app, and have access to printed wallpaper for your phone and custom printed filters for your pictures. It's a 360-degree delight. These are more than stores. They are gathering spots for incredible women to connect with the brand and have fun doing it. We have a forward-thinking team in our retail stores and an original entrepreneurial culture of excellent service. Lilly knew everyone in Palm Beach. We know our core consumers as they come into our stores or hop on our site.
If you are new, we tell you the story of the brand in person or digitally. We use technology to make her shopping experience fun. It is in our DNA. We have a healthy full-price wholesale business. We have an innovative signature store program that delivers an experience just like our company stores. With an added benefit of a local entrepreneur to build the brand in a social Lilly way. We have a lot of respect for the adjacencies and the traffic that department stores have historically driven and selectively work with modern department store chains to create Lilly shops in their best stores. Marketing and communications, they are really fun. We are colorful in every sense of the word. We focus on an incredible combination of data-driven analytics and beautiful works of art.
We focus on attracting new consumers to the brand while maintaining a very close relationship with our current consumers. We are running a CRM system that takes consumer information and informs a smart marketing strategy. It has been fantastic to see the consumer segmentation and personalization light up our girl and talk to her one-to-one about which products speak to her. Our creative platform of Life in Print is special. It layers aspirational resort fashion imagery with hand-painted artwork. This visual style catches her eye and differentiates us from the sea of sameness that can set in across fashion brands. We aim to be leaders in social media. Our current social community tops 2.4 million while achieving remarkable engagement metrics. We have been called social media darlings by the likes of Fortune and other major publications, and Lilly would love it.
If you think about it, social media really is the modern juice stand where we can bring together our community and speak directly with her. In addition to advertising and social media as consumer acquisition tools, we collaborate with other great brands to introduce new consumers into our brand. This worked well in the past when we collaborated with Estée Lauder and with Target. We saw terrific brand exposure through these collaborations. As you can see, we use our competitive advantages every day in the product we make, the way we distribute and communicate it, in modern ways to keep her highly engaged. We get resort. We live a printed life. Having done this for over 50 years, we are very fortunate to have a dedicated following of consumers and an exceptionally talented and inspiring team.
This brand is special. We have another short video that shows a little glimpse into why I am so excited about our future.
I think working in a building that people are so passionate about what we're doing, I think it's a positive inspiration. Love what you do and you'll never work a day in your life. I mean, it just gets better and better and better. Lilly Pulitzer. You probably get thousands of emails like this, but I'm writing in pure admiration of this remarkable story. When I go to the store, every time I walk through the doors, the employees have a huge smile on their faces. Lilly's story is truly inspiring. Whenever I'm sad, I can go hit the mall and to your store, and I instantly feel refreshed. This isn't even half of what I could say about my love for Lilly Pulitzer. Thank you again so much for making happy Lilly Pulitzer amazing. Thank you for such a wonderful brand. I've worked at Lilly just over eight years.
12 years. 14 years. Woo. I don't even remember how long I've been here. Favorite moments we have here is the resort presentations. It really just shows how progressive we are. Seven months. I think our HR summer intern week. Trust and passion all the way. Eight years. I think just the friends I've met. They're my best friends in life. Seeing George Jones for the first time. Building items. Resort presentations. I'm very excited for our future. It's such a great company and such great product that we have. I feel like the sky is the limit for us. I'm excited to see it grow. To them, we're basically changing the world. Multigenerational happiness. The possibilities that we have right now is really quite exciting. We do have fun, and we do work hard.
One of my favorite quotes from Lilly is, "I didn't set out to be different. I just wanted to do things my own way." From resort wear born in Palm Beach circa 1900 to Lilly's igniting the scene with print and color in the 1950s, this brand is different, and we love it. Better yet, our customer loves it. The story is sunny, and the future is bright. Thank you.
Thank you, Michelle. Next up is Chris Heyn, Group CEO of Southern Tide. Our company and I personally have known Chris, an apparel industry veteran, for over 15 years. First as president of Nautica when our Lanier group was the tailored clothing licensee of Nautica, and later as CEO of Southern Tide. Oxford got to know the Southern Tide business when it was in its infancy. Like Tommy Bahama, in 2013, it was bought by a private equity firm. This firm wisely brought in Chris to take this great entrepreneurial company to the next level. Chris has done a great job of assembling a team of seasoned executives with experience at some of the best brands and businesses in the industry. Together, they have professionalized the operations and processes at Southern Tide to tee the business up for long-term growth.
With Oxford's acquisition of Southern Tide in April of this year, we couldn't be more pleased to have Chris and Southern Tide as a part of Oxford. Chris?
Thank you, Tom. Again, hi, everybody. My name is Chris Heyn. I am the CEO of Southern Tide. I just want to thank you for your time today to let us tell you a little bit about what we do and how we do it. Before I get started, since I am kind of the new kid on the block, I just want to let you know how much admiration and respect we have and where we are with our brand, where you see Tommy and Lilly. It is a great inspiration for us, and we love to compete, and we got a lot of work to do. Also being a part of Lanier and actually working with them over the years, it is great to be part of that team also. We are excited to be here.
We genuinely are excited to be here, let me tell you a little bit about Southern Tide also, because it's also again, just a great story. It was started in 2006, basically with the Skipjack Polo , which is undoubtedly, we feel, the best polo in the marketplace today. We created this one shirt with a tremendous amount of passion, with concentration on the fabric, the fit, the style, the occasion use, and basically wanted to say, "Hey, how can people have fun wearing our product?" That one single knit started off and now we have a whole collection of premium lifestyle brands. Southern Tide has transformed that knit into basically a lifestyle for young people who understand modern design and youthful trends, and have a love for the Southern culture.
We are inspired by the vibrant coast, which has a tailored to it appreciation for, again, classic design, a good fit, high quality apparel, and most importantly, having fun. They say if experience is the new luxury, Southern Tide's experience is having fun. Our brand pillars are capable, fun-loving, and social, and I believe our fall 2016 campaign video does a really nice job at showcasing those elements and gives you a glimpse into the Southern Tide world. Let's talk a little further in depth about what Southern Tide is and what we stand for. As you can see, we're all about classic, coastal, and southern. Each word is critical to us. Those words together are paramount for us. The qualities of classic is generosity, courtesy, elegance, representing who we are and who we've always been. Products that stand the test of time. We say form follows function.
Our products are timeless. Coastal. The channels and the islands and the inlets along the coastline dictate their own unique lifestyle. We live that lifestyle. We speak the language. We know how to read the signs, the marks, the cans. We travel the coast constantly. We're authentic. We're active. We want to be close to the water. They say water represents 71% of the earth, but 90% of the fun. We want to be a part of that memory and a part of that fun. Southern. The Southern culture transcends geography. It's a state of mind. It's a way of life that embrace tastes, heritage, manners, charm of a premium lifestyle that so many of us long to experience. The North is a place, the South, it's a spirit. Over the years, Southern Tide has added a growing assortment of lifestyle offerings.
We are listening to our consumers and adding products that we know are important to their lives. Products that are multi-generational, multi-seasonal, dual gender. We now offer a wide breadth such as four polos where we started with one. Four different fabrics. A multitude of different woven sports shirts, T-shirts, bottoms, shorts, outerwear, swimwear, performance wear in our T3. We just recently this past spring, brought on a women's sportswear collection. Color is very important to us, and has always been inspired by the landscapes of the South and the vibrant colors that surround us. We are also passionate about creating products that fit the lifestyles of our consumers. Where are they? What is their occasion use? Our Tide to Trail, or T3 line, was created specifically from a request from one of our consumers for more products with performance features such as sun protection, moisture wicking, and quick drying fabric.
We are now incorporating and have always incorporated performance into our stretch or our comfort into 50% of our products. Whether it be a knit, a woven, or all our bottoms. Comfort and performance is critical. Our women's collection was created because classic, coastal, and southern is just as relevant to her as it is to him. You can imagine with what we do in terms of talking to consumers through our social media, we get constantly, "You should try this. You should try this. You should try that product." We have always asked ourselves six questions before we start to develop new product. Does the product cohesively fit the Southern Tide collection and brand image? Does the target market need this product? Sometimes we want them to want it, but do they need it? Are they looking for it?
Will the product provide a new source of growth for the company? What is the competitive landscape of the product? What is the headwind? What is the market look like? Is the current sourcing structure capable of constructing the product to the Southern Tide standards? Will Southern Tide be able to deliver the product to the consumer at an attractive value? As you can see, we do not enter into new products lightly. We do our research, and we make sure we are going to do something, we do it right and at the highest quality. Our customer is someone who is young, athletic, and fun, yet appreciates classic design, a good fit, and high quality. They have taste and style in just the right proportion. Our target demographic is really 21-28. The brand transcends any specific age group and is really appreciated by both young and old alike.
It is the youthful spirit of the brand that is most important, that quality and color combination. Color attracts, quality keeps. To always keep a pulse on what our customers want, we conduct tremendous amount of focus groups several times a year to better understand the latest trends that they are following, what they are wearing, and get their feedback on product. We are constantly reaching out to research and find out what the consumers are wearing, where they are going. We make sure we know our customer and what they want to see from Southern Tide. We love connecting and living with our consumers and our wholesale customers. Our marketing department has a strategic focus on communicating at all levels, on both the traditional and non-traditional methods. We have a national advertising and regional advertising campaign this past year. Our website is robust.
Our email marketing, our digital advertising, our events, and most recently, for the first time, we put out a fall catalog, which we are very excited about. We need to maintain that connection to make sure we support our relevancy and maintain that relevancy. We also have a very unique program in our college ambassadors in over 129 campuses throughout the U.S. These are both social, brand, and school ambassadors that are connected with our core demographic and are able to tell our brand story. They are a fantastic way for us to understand what our consumers want to see from Southern Tide products and better understand the competitive marketplace. It's almost like a working R&D group. Where are they shopping? Who are their favorite brands? Who can we marry with?
Our social media following on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and Tumblr all continually have good, steady growth and following. Our fans are passionate about telling us how they involve themselves in our brand and what excites them about our brand. We have a multi-channel go-to-market strategy, which expands Southern Tide brand presence and offers consumers seamless and convenient shopping experience. At this time, our four channels of distribution include specialty stores, better department stores, signature stores, and our own e-commerce site. As you can see, while our brand has the distinct Southern charm and appeal, this creates a reach far beyond the South itself. It's expansive across the United States, and the Southern Tide product is sold in over 40 states today. The talent at Southern Tide has evolved over the years as the brand has grown.
We have a group of passionate and proven leaders in the industry. Each of their teams consist of a highly talented and driven people who actually live the Southern Tide life and are tenacious about the pursuit to grow the brand, to grow the lifestyle, while always having fun. We also have an optimized sales force and are increasing our strength in sourcing, forecasting, purchasing, and quality control by leveraging the strength at Oxford. That's what Tom was talking about, building that foundation, the platform for growth. We never compromise on our pursuit of great talent, which is why we also brought a full team of experienced professionals when we actually launched our women's line. We continue to adapt and thrive as we grow. As you can see, Southern Tide is fun, active, and ever-expanding brand. We do practice what we preach. We do live it.
At Southern Tide, we truly believe in creating apparel that fits the lifestyle of our consumers. Although we're a young brand, we have a strong group of dedicated followers, and we see that follower and those followers only growing exponentially as we build the energy around our brand. Thanks so much for letting me tell you about Southern Tide.
Thank you, Chris. Our final presenter of the afternoon is Wesley Howard, President of our Lanier Apparel Group. Wesley joined Oxford back in 1982, straight out of Georgia Tech, as an account rep in Oxford's Merona women's business and worked there for several years. We eventually sold the Merona brand to Target, but we kept Wesley and moved him into Lanier Apparel. Both turned out to be excellent moves. At Lanier, Wesley flourished in a number of marketing, merchandising, and sales roles, and even ran several of our early experiments in company-owned retail. Wesley was promoted to president of Lanier in 2011. It is important to note that Wesley is the first leader of Lanier to come from a marketing and merchandising background. All previous leaders of Lanier had come out of manufacturing. With his market-oriented view of the world, Wesley has been instrumental in transforming the business.
Historically, Lanier was a supply-led business that viewed itself as a manufacturer trying to find markets for the products it was good at making. Now, Lanier is a demand-led business that assesses the wants and needs of the market and consumers and then uses its extraordinary operating platform to fulfill those needs. We are very proud to have Wesley as part of our senior leadership team. Wesley?
Good afternoon. I'm Wesley Howard. I'm President of Oxford's Lanier Apparel Group. You just heard from our sister companies how a single brand can define a business, and I think you can see the emotional contact that people get with all of this. At Lanier, we're different. We're a platform and a chassis for multiple brands and labels. Let me tell you how we do this in four distinctly different ways. First is our ability to support existing brands, often with licenses. As an example, I'll walk you quickly through our history with the well-known Kenneth Cole brand. In 2007, this very established footwear and sportswear brand was looking for a partner to maximize would've been a relatively small tailored clothing business. As the second-largest wholesaler of tailored clothing in North America, with over 50 years of experience, we were their choice.
Upon completion of our deal, our merchandising and design team went to work and created a complete tailored clothing line that would complement Kenneth Cole's men's sportswear brand. This included suits and sport coats and pants and suit separates. Importantly, we also identified two price lanes, Kenneth Cole New York and Kenneth Cole Reaction, and this allowed for multiple distribution channels. Prior to this, it had just been one channel. We try to be fairly creative, and as a result, we were able to do this in such a way that we could maximize the volume that you could do with this brand. These collections were then sold by our very intense and experienced New York-based sales team to customers like Macy's, Burlington, Bon-Ton, the Men's Wearhouse, and many others.
For those of you who wear suits, glad to see a lot of you do, manufacturing tailored clothing is a very complex type of business. It's both a science and it's an art, it requires a very skilled workforce. Our worldwide manufacturing network, as well as our own factory in Mexico, was employed to make the best value and highest quality product available for Kenneth Cole. This is a depiction of the resources we have available to us, including what we use for Kenneth Cole. Finally, our state-of-the-art distribution center and 3PL distribution network was used to fulfill orders in the U.S. and abroad. These orders range from traditional large carton shipments, but also increasingly, filling and shipping individual orders directly to the end consumer on behalf of our retail and wholesale customers like, for instance, macys.com.
All of this platform kind of culminated into the fact that Kenneth Cole and Kenneth Cole Reaction tailored clothing now generates over $40 million in revenue for Lanier Apparel and is consistently at the top of the bestseller list of our customers. In fact, if you're not at the top of your bestseller list for your customers, you're not gonna last very long, and that's something I think we've been really good at doing over the last several years. We create great selling product. We have similar partnerships with brands like Geoffrey Beene. You can see here Geoffrey Beene, Dockers, and Nick Graham. Not surprisingly, and importantly, these brands are also consistent top sellers.
I would take out of this, one of the things we're really proud to say is we know how to make products that sell for our customers and bring value to their business. Another way that we use our platform is by developing new concepts and products that fill voids, white space often called, that we identify in the marketplace. For example, back in 2013, we believed that a warehouse club, certain warehouse club, would benefit from a pant program under their own label. Our design merchandising sourcing teams got together, and they developed a superior performance pant that had the finesse and the construction of a tailored pant, similar to what you look at here. We brought this idea to the club, and they were thrilled with the thought of it.
It's actually gone on to become one of the most successful products that they've ever had in the men's apparel business that they carry and as opposed to just pants. We've shipped over two and a half million units of this pant. The third way we use our platform is by using our design capabilities to develop in-house brands. Billy London up here, a modern take on tailored clothing really focused on a younger man, younger kid often, can be found at kohls.com, Amazon, Burlington, and a lot of others. It's also remained a top performer, if not the top performer in most of its channels. We also created Oxford Golf brand in-house. This is a collection of terrific performance apparel and sportswear for men and women. It's sold in over 1,400 of the best golf pro shops and resorts in the U.S.
Finally, our chassis is used by a variety of smaller brands in their early stages of development. It's a great example of our product engine and how we can help an up-and-coming brand, frankly, is Southern Tide. Back in 2009, we were asked to design, and source, and develop new product categories to help this rapidly growing young business expand beyond the polo shirt that they were doing. You can see the impact of that polo shirt on that business over the years. We continue to be a similar resource to a variety of brands in their early stages of development. I mentioned Honored Reserve here, another one of our key focus points. Have talked a lot about the platform today.
One of the things that I have to say is that the reality that this platform is made up of a lot of committed associates with what I think are best-in-class skills and knowledge of our business. Their efforts and their results have consistently led to best-selling products for our customers, and it's what's made us a go-to resource for retailers and brands alike looking to further develop their business. Thanks for your time today.
Thank you, Wesley. There you have it. We have just walked you through each of our four operating groups, and in the process, you've received some excellent exposure to the very capable leaders of those businesses. As I mentioned in the introduction, we believe that all four of these businesses can contribute to the profitable growth of Oxford. In the process, we expect them to generate strong cash flow, which can be reinvested in our existing businesses to fuel further growth and/or used to help fund the acquisition of additional businesses, which themselves will help drive profitable growth. In this way, we believe that we can continue to drive long-term shareholder value. With that, I'm going to conclude, and in just a minute, open the floor up to questions.
As you all know, when we wrap up here, we're going to move next door, have some cocktails and hors d'oeuvres, a chance to spend a little more time with the team here today and mingle a bit. I'm going to open the floor up, as I said, in a minute, into general questions for them. I would point out that this is a great opportunity for you. Myself, Scott, Anne, Jevon, we all talk to you guys a lot. We work with you on questions you have about your model, trying to develop your forecast for the business, all those kinds of things. Today's sort of a different day in that you've got the leaders of these great brands and businesses here.
I would suggest that you direct your questions, and I'll be here, too, but that you focus your questions on questions that you don't have the opportunity to ask all the time. Things about the brand, about the products, about their consumer and where they see their consumer base growing, all those types of things. That being said, I recognize that the biggest question probably on everybody's mind here today is how are things going right now? I'm going to go ahead and hit that one up front. I'm going to tell you everything I've got to say about the balance of the fiscal year. Third quarter, which we're in right now and which will end in a couple of weeks, is our smallest quarter. As you all know, I think all of you know, it's by far our smallest. October's a small month.
That said, we do have a couple of issues that are weighing a little bit on the third quarter. We had Hurricane Matthew, and as you guys know, that hit Florida and kind of tracked the coast up, and that's a very important region for us. Florida is the biggest state in retail for both Tommy Bahama and Lilly. It's a huge wholesale state for Southern Tide. That whole region there is very important to us. We lost a number of days to store closures. Fortunately, none of our company-owned stores are seriously damaged. All our employees are safe and accounted for and all that, so we're in good shape there. We did lose a little business. We also think it slowed down slightly the annual migration of snowbirds south.
The second issue that we have going on is the Hanjin Shipping bankruptcy, and no doubt you've read a lot about this in the paper. We actually had 2 containers that were caught up in that situation. They're both Lilly Pulitzer containers. The good news is that those containers have been released. We are going to get the merchandise. The only issue is that we probably won't ship that in October now as planned. It'll move out to November. The combination of those 2 factors, the hurricane impact and the shipping situation with the Hanjin bankruptcy, could leave us a little bit light on the third quarter. That said, we still feel very good about the full year. We think we can achieve our objectives for the full year. The Hanjin stuff will just ship later. It's a timing issue.
We feel great about our product lineups and our marketing plans for holiday. January is actually an important month for us as well, as you all know. Feel good about the year. Third quarter could be a little light, not a major concern for us. With that said, I'll open up the floor for questions. Again, remember, this is a unique opportunity. Yes, Ed.
Sorry, one quick following question. Obviously it's a small quarter, but if you could just maybe help us understand a little bit more kind of what those two puts and takes might do, given that that number can move around a lot. I guess, bigger picture question for Southern Tide. It seems like your success has spawned a lot of copycats, Southern Living. It seems like lots of takes on Southern Tide. I guess, how do you think about differentiating the brand longer term, and kind of moving beyond just the core polo?
Okay. I'm going to reserve the second one. I'll let Chris jump in there. We feel very good about our ability to compete, not only amongst the other Southerns, but in the broader world as well. On the third quarter question, I think you know very well that for us, a penny a share is $265,000 or $275,000. Moving a couple of million dollars of wholesale out in Lilly, for example, where we're very high wholesale gross margins can have a meaningful impact on the contribution dollars. All that said, we're not prepared to really quantify. We don't have enough information to give you a whole lot more detail about that. I think the important thing is, remember, third quarter is small. We still feel good about our ability to achieve our objectives for the year.
With that, unless Scott, you want anything to add on to that, I'll let Chris talk about how we feel about Southern brands and some of the others.
It's a good question. Anytime there's a movement in the marketplace, there always are copycats. There's certain characteristics of copycats. We're kind of not really focused on them. We're focused on our own customer. If we're true to quality, brand, marketing, and really getting out and having that consumer response, I think they'll see a thinning out. We love competition. There's a reason why they call it copycats. What we have to do in our design and merchandising is to create new products, new fabrics that still speak to our brand DNA. With that, I think we're excited about the future.
I would add to that, Chris said it so beautifully during his presentation. He said color attracts, quality retains. I think it's the same for the sort of Southern thing. It's the easiest thing in the world to slap a Southern sort of something on a T-shirt, and you don't have to know much at all about the business to be able to do that. But to be able to deliver true quality sportswear the way that Southern Tide does, truly beautifully made, innovative products that hold up and endure the test of time, that's not something that everybody can do. Chris and his team were already doing that.
We believe that by being part of Oxford, that ability is only enhanced, as well as their ability to finance upcoming seasons, deliver on time, fulfill orders accurately on time, all those things, we think they've got a huge leg up.
Yeah. One of the things, you're going to learn I could keep on going, Tom will give me the hook. The other thing.
We'll let Michelle do that.
Okay, thanks. The other thing too that really kind of distinguishes ourselves, if you were to talk to our customers, is our customer service. We spend a tremendous amount of time not just responding to customer service, but being progressive in customer service. As we're building our brand and what we call creating separation from either our in-store presence, how we market ourselves, who we brand with, we start to see a nice separation there. From a customer service perspective, that also is kind of the mortar that keeps propelling us kind of past our competition.
Yes.
Yeah, this is for Michelle on Lilly. You mentioned you're going to have 39 stores. You're going to go to five to six next year. Are the five to six contiguous, or are they in other parts of the country? Secondly, your restaurant concept seems to have been successful on Tommy. Would you ever consider a restaurant concept on Lilly? If not, why not?
I'm going to let Michelle answer the first part of the question, and then I'll talk maybe a little bit about the second piece, the restaurant piece, and let Michelle elaborate.
Great. Sure. We're very excited about our plans for new store expansion for next year. We've really been taking a south to north and east to west strategy with our retail expansion, these next five to six are consistent with that. The next store that we are opening next week is in Houston.
On the restaurant piece, it is a hugely important and very successful part of the Tommy Bahama brand. Doug Wood will be the first person to tell you that it is not easy. This is not for amateurs. Do not try this at home. It's a very different business, and it's a tough one. In Lilly Pulitzer, as Michelle talked about in her presentation, we are all about providing our Lilly girl an incredible experience in the store and in the actual bricks and mortar environment. Where that may evolve over time, I can't say for sure. There's certainly a lot of people that are sort of rushing into the restaurant or food and beverage arena out of our space. They're trying to add that on. Could happen in Lilly Pulitzer at some point, but it's not in the plan for the next several years.
Frankly, part of it is we don't think we need to do that. Yes, Rick.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. A question for Doug, and then one for Michelle. Doug, can you just expand upon Tommy Bahama's millennial strategy? How do you feel about your customers perhaps getting a little bit older and being able to recruit a younger generation? Secondly, also within Tommy, what do you need to see happen in Asia in order to go all in in that market or just exit completely? For Michelle, can you just expand upon the category diversification strategy that you touched upon to go beyond your core in dresses? Secondly, as we think about the high margin profile that Lilly has, how confident are you that you can retain that margin profile given investments that may be needed in systems and processes?
Yes. I'll kick off. With regards to the millennials, I didn't have in my presentation, but the goalpost for our guests is like this 40-60-year-old, and that's for both men's and women's. At the same time, the funnel has to be much broader than that. What we've seen, and this is absolutely part of our strategy now, has been going forward. Our restaurant and where we have our islands are this multigenerational basket. A lot of introduction to our brand actually starts there, where if you were in Naples during season, I got like three generations there shopping, and there's no barriers. We look at that first. Let's make sure we're talking there. Second, if you've watched our marketing over the last several years, our models, how we're approaching our marketing, but also social media.
I don't know if you saw any of our Lil' Kev action that we had during the NBA finals where I wish we could take credit for it, but all of a sudden, I've got the Cleveland Cavaliers going around with our national ad, and we're able then to underground keep pushing that out there that really, would I ever have done that considering where my goalposts are? No. It does allow us to get outside, and we're seeing it all the time. It's not just a men's thing, it's also from a women's standpoint. The success of our women's swim goes way beyond where our core guests are, and it touches early 20s and up. That's on the women's side of things. Feel really good about that. With regards to international, it's Japan and it's Australia for us right now.
With regards, Australia is great. It's profitable, running great. Japan's where our focus is because that's where, even though I've got some great sales going on, it's still losing money, and I'm actively looking for partners as it is. I'm not going to keep looking for long. I'm either going to find a partner that can expand upon what I've got going on in Japan, or we'll shut it down. Now, with Japan, though, I will say this, it is absolutely helping me like crazy in Waikiki. I was just there last week, and our restaurant was full of Japanese guests, and they wouldn't have known about us if I wouldn't all this work for the last three, four years in Japan. That's where that is.
Michelle, the product category expansion.
Absolutely. The best way to think about our product expansion opportunities within our strategy of resort chic apparel and accessories is to go spend a week in a fabulous resort and really think about the different apparel and accessories needs that a woman has from morning till night. We talk often about where are the opportunities and as a resort, we're positioning what kind of potential opportunity is there. When you really spend a day at a fabulous resort and you think about the morning walk outfit, the breakfast outfit, the different bags you need for those moments, the active moments, the lunch trip. There's beach and pool squeezed in there, and all of the coverups and everything that one needs there. The dinner outfit is different, and again, accessories to go along with every single segment.
We really see it as quite broad in terms of opportunities, and we are certainly doing very well in the kind of daytime arena, the day dresses and sportswear. The more active piece of her life and her kind of Starbucks run outfit, I would say we're newer on some of those areas, but seeing great potential and certainly the accessories, the amount of opportunity there, we're definitely just getting started.
Okay, other questions? Yes, Pam.
Yeah.
Wait for the
Thank you.
Everybody can hear you.
Thank you. I have one for each of you, actually. Doug, just your thoughts on women's progress beyond Swim.
It's been close to a year now. It's just spring product last year. How do you feel about that? Then you commented on Japan and your thoughts on it now. How long do you give it to figure whether it's working or not working? Should I go through all of them or should I-
Well, let's maybe go one at a time, and we'll start with talking about women's at Swim. On Japan, I don't know that we want to draw a particular line in the sand, as you know that's not our style to do it. I think our track record has unequivocally demonstrated that we are very patient, but our patience is not infinite. That said, I will say that for each of the last 3 years, we've absolutely met or exceeded what we said we were going to do in international, and this year is no different. Doug and his team are doing a terrific job of moving that business forward, and it's actually moving forward at a pretty rapid pace given the state of the consumer market globally. We're pleased with the way it's progressing. At the same time, we can't endure operating losses forever.
With that, I'll let Doug jump in for women's.
You can't look at women's without kind of just, one, taking a step back and remembering that, and it was in my presentation. We went from being 25% to 75% direct-to-consumer. That goes back from 2008 to now. That really comes from building the women's business from about 16% of our business to about 30% of our business. We built this women's business where, given our footprints, we really didn't have one to begin with. Now where we are is I brought an entire new women's design team to Seattle, and, one, I'm thrilled with the progress we're making. There's some good steps. When I get to the marketplace, I'm still not completely pleased with what it's done to our business. I'm seeing success with product. I'm seeing success with what we've had behind us.
I'm very excited with what I have ahead of us, but there's steps. I don't expect to see all of a sudden to get to my goals with women's, which our goal is to get that to be 50/50 with men's. That's where the real breakout is, but we're not there yet. The only thing I can really keep going back to is I'm very pleased with the progress and what I see this holiday. If you go into our store right now, that's our new holiday one. I'm very pleased with it. It's a step. It's not the end.
Thank you. For Michelle, I don't know if you can answer this or not, but obviously you've been with the company a long time and in various roles. Now that you're in this leadership position, is there anything that you're prioritizing differently from the previous leadership? Not that you're not following what they had been doing, but just now that you're the CEO saying, "Aha, this is what I want to do first.
Sure. Great question. I had been with the company for a long time and felt that my thumbprint and whatnot had been certainly all over the company strategies we had been following for the past several years. I think that answers the first part of the question. In terms of priorities, and that being said, it is a different role and wonderful perspective to see the whole organization from this vantage point. That does give me a different kind of lens on things in a way, being able to see all the trade-offs, and there are many. In terms of priorities, again, I don't know that they're different from the past leadership because I think the pace of the business changes, and who's to say what those priorities would have been.
I think my main priority is to keep the company moving forward, to think about what would Lilly be wearing and how she would've been shopping and creating if she were starting her business today, and staying relevant to our customer. Certainly team leadership, culture, as we're getting bigger. That is a top priority, just some of the different challenges that come with growth. I think those are the basics of the business.
The one last one, just regarding with Southern Tide. How do we think about store growth going forward? You said how many states you're already in, but there's a part of the country that you're clearly not in yet. Lilly, you highlighted how many stores you're opening next year, just how we think about it from retail and wholesale. Also now that you have the power of Oxford behind you, I guess what are the first things, or how have you been utilizing that expertise in the short time that you've been part of the family, and what do you see going forward as, once again, the priorities there?
Pam, I'm going to jump in real quickly here and say that, and let Chris answer, but since we bought Southern Tide, our priority of course has been on integrating it into Oxford and really positioning it so that Chris and his team are able to take advantage of the institutional strengths that we have. The second thing that we've been doing is we've been working very closely with Chris and Rob Iorio on their strategic plan and how we're going to develop this business going forward. I don't want Chris to feel pressured to give a lot of specificity about numbers of doors and that kind of thing at this time. He can talk generally about how we plan to grow the business.
Unlike Doug and Michelle and Wesley, with whom we've been working for years, and we do a new strategic plan every year, but it tends to be an evolution of the previous year's plan. With Chris, we're still in that sort of greenfield stage, if you will, on the plan. There's great opportunity out there, and Chris is going to tell you about it, but he's not going to give you a lot of door counts.
Yes. We are tremendously young and new, and our only goal is any time you see us, you see us, hopefully, in the right way. That's the most important thing. Obviously, because we're so new and young, we're weighted pretty heavily on wholesale. Any one of us up here will tell you, any time you can control your brand messaging, and you have greater ownership, you have a greater likelihood of being more successful. It's all in that balance of understanding how your brand, and what those channels, how they balance against one another. Again, when we first started a couple of years ago, the first thing we did is make sure our base was great. We always say, "Energize your base and then attract new customers." That's kind of been our mantra and will continue to be in the short term.
On the long term, like I said, just being a part of Oxford and having the experience and the knowledge base of everything that Tommy and Lilly have done. Not that we don't want to forge our own lane, but there's a tremendous amount of intellectual intelligence and market intelligence that we can thrive from to say, "Okay, what's that right balance for us?" The most important thing in terms of timing is to do it in a balanced and thoughtful way. Anything we do, we don't want to rush to anything. If you rush, you make mistakes. Don't get me wrong, we're not worried about making mistakes. If we make them, we want to make them fast. Again, we have a long history with the other brands here that we can definitely go to school on.
Question for Doug. You mentioned smaller footprint stores. Can you talk about the sizes you're thinking about in testing and maybe just what the Tommy store evolves into over the next couple of years? Thanks.
Yeah. I think when it comes to footprint, we're not tied to one model. In other words, you might find a great resort opportunity where maybe 10 years ago, that would've been a great place for a specialty store, but there's no specialty store there anymore. I don't need 3,500 sq ft and three deliveries to be successful. Instead, I'm looking for 1,800 sq ft, but I know that that market is underserved, and it's a resort market, and I can go in and be profitable. On the other hand, I'm still looking for these great locations that. We have about 116 full-price stores. It's not like there aren't still opportunities that come up.
We evaluate each one to say, "Okay, what's the right model that we go with?" Decide if the economics work, if the market's underserved with Tommy, and whether I need a store in that market. That's the process we go through.
Thanks. Michelle, you talked about a steady inflow of new customers.
Can you talk about where they're coming from online, from the stores, and any insight in terms of seeing that inflow of new customers and where you can go regionally and across the-
Sure. Absolutely
U.S. markets?
Thank you. Definitely online. It's a wonderful consumer acquisition method for us. Our marketing team really does a tremendous job thinking about the whole consumer journey and all the different pathways, the ways that a customer can come into the brand. There's really certainly online, but within online, is she coming through a search engine or social media? Even within that, was it something we posted or a different advertisement? There really are many different ways, even within the digital space, that customers will come to us. We are getting new consumers through when we open new stores. We opened in Disney Springs earlier this year and have had just a wonderful amount of people come through those doors.
What we see as the most valuable and exciting is when we can get a customer to come at us one way, whether it's through online, and then get her to shop in the store or vice versa. We really do see different strengths of both of those channels being able to be played. That's our goal, is to get her to come in one way, but make sure that she gets the whole experience no matter what. Certainly, all the digital properties have been wonderful for customer acquisition.
We really appreciate you guys being here this afternoon and appreciate all the great questions. We do have another 45 minutes to an hour where we'll be next door, in the library, I believe they call it, and be having drinks and hors d'oeuvres. We hope that you will come over and join us. If you can't, we understand, but we hope you will. Thank you very much for your time and attention today.