Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Signet's 2023 Investor Day. I'm Colleen Rooney, Signet's Chief Communications and ESG Officer. I'll start by reminding everybody of our safe harbor statement. During today's presentation, we will make certain forward-looking statements. Any statements that are not historical facts are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. We urge you to read the risk factors, cautionary language, and other disclosure in our annual form on 10-K, quarterly reports on form 10-Q, and current reports on form 8-K. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to revise or publicly update forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. During the presentation, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures.
For further discussion of the non-GAAP financial measures, as well as the reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, investors should review our most recent earnings release available online at www.signetjewelers.com/investor. Okay, phew. We're officially beginning. Thank you for joining us today. While we did host a virtual event 2 years ago, today's is much more meaningful to us for 2 reasons. First, we can be here safely together with you all. Second, we're able to properly introduce you to 6 of my colleagues who are part of the leadership team that Gina built that is representative of the broader team that's leading Signet's transformation. We're happy to be with you. Second, we are very happy to be here today to show that we're achieving on our commitments at a faster pace and with a consistent say-do ratio.
For those reasons, we're looking forward to giving you the benefit of a deeper dive on Signet, sharing how we are continuing to advance our position with more challenging goals. As you see, we have an information-rich agenda direct from the leaders who are determined to take Signet to new heights. As you know, Signet can be a difficult company to benchmark. In a category with only one scaled public company, that would be us. In fact, Signet and jewelry are not the same as specialty apparel or other discretionary luxury retail. The jewelry category, and especially Signet's position within it, are unique. Today we'll take some time to dig in, to review our proprietary data, to share our fact-based, data-driven perspective on why Signet's upside potential is so strong. I'm sure you go to many investor days and hear about what management teams say will happen.
Today is different. We'll focus on what is happening already and the upside potential as we continue driving our competitive advantages. As you read my colleagues' bios, they're in front of you listen to their vision and passion for our company, you'll no doubt determine for yourself that this is the company with the right strategy and the best leadership team to deliver it. It all starts with the architect of our transformation. It's my honor to introduce Gina Drosos to you today. Many of you know Gina, perhaps, who has served as our leader of our transformation for roughly five and a half years. What you may not be aware of is Gina's intentionality, her consistency, her predictability in her leadership approach, and her success in doing so.
What Jenna is doing at Signet is what she pioneered when creating a $12 billion beauty business at P&G. It's what she did as an entrepreneur at Assurex, which is a purpose-based genetics and data company, where she grew the company 12-fold, negotiating its sale to the market leader. The red thread of Jenna's career is transformative leadership. She enters a category, analyzes the competition, and creates a strategy to build competitive advantage, and does so always a believer in the power of an integrated channel approach. She then executes, taking a disciplined approach to driving out costs, investing in capabilities to build moats of competitive advantage, attracting and retaining the best talent, all while creating a culture of innovation, agility, and performance. Other CEOs would agree with me. Read chapter 1 of P&G's CEO A.G. Lafley's preeminent book on strategy, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works.
He quotes Jenna repeatedly. He used Jenna's transformation of the Olay business as a primary case study, saying, and I quote, "She took over a declining, stagnant, $200 million brand with aging customers, uncompetitive products, strong competition, and momentum going in the wrong direction. She turned it into a $2.5 billion brand with extremely high margins and a consumer base squarely in the heart of the most attractive part of the market." With that, let's discuss Signet, our potential to grow and win, starting with our leader, Jenna Drosos.
Good morning, everyone. We're so thankful to have all of you here today. I know it's a big time commitment, so we really appreciate it. As Colleen mentioned, I'm here with six members of my leadership team. We're additionally joined by two director colleagues, our Chairman, Todd Stitzer, and Director Andre Branch. We're all privileged to represent Signet's board, broader leadership team, and our total organization of more than 29,000 team members. Since beginning our transformation in Signet's fiscal year 2019, we've delivered strong returns for our shareholders. Signet's financial health has gone from being an impediment, preventing appropriate investment in the business and talent to becoming a significant competitive advantage. Now, in times of market growth or decline, we are investing to advance our capabilities further.
It's a key reason why Signet has total shareholder return ahead of both the S&P 500 and XRT in the past 3 and 5 years. From fiscal 2019 to fiscal 2023, we've invested more than $750 million in capital to fuel our strategies, and this was largely funded by cost savings. We've returned $1.4 billion to shareholders through a combination of share repurchase and dividends. We paid nearly $900 million cash for two strategic acquisitions, both of which were timed to take advantage of market conditions. We've paid down more than half a billion dollars in debt to reduce our leverage from a high of 4 times EBITDA to a very healthy 2 times, well under our less than 2.75 times target.
Liquidity has tripled from $880 million to $2.6 billion. Two years ago, we met with you virtually to outline the strategic priorities for the next 3-5-year phase, embarking on even more stretching goals. We said we could consistently achieve an annual double-digit non-GAAP operating margin by leveraging our scale and structural advantages, including product innovation, jewelry services, marketing, and supply chain. We've done that, increasing margin 2.5 times since fiscal 2019. We said we would target top-line growth to reach revenue of $9 billion by leveraging our uniquely unified retail capabilities, connecting our physical and virtual footprints in ways that are difficult for competitors to match. We're on pace to do this. We said we were confident we could increase U.S. market share to 10% of the category from about 6% at the time.
In just two years, we have virtually achieved that goal with an estimated 9.7% U.S. market share at the end of fiscal 2023. In other words, we said what we would do, and we are doing it. As Colleen said, we call that having a high say-do ratio. For the Signet team, this is a source of pride, a muscle we know how to flex, and an ongoing commitment. Looking ahead, we want you to have the same confidence in Signet's growth potential that we have. I'll start with perspective on our performance and position in the industry, and then my team will show you how we're leveraging our capabilities to achieve our vision. I've spent time listening to investors and analysts. In fact, we ran an investor perception study before hosting today's event.
I want to address each of these perceptions in turn because they don't all reflect the reality of the company that Signet is today. There's a belief that Signet is a short-term COVID beneficiary and not a long-term growth story. The reality is that while we did benefit in 2021 from COVID-related stimulus, largely in lower-priced fashion, we've also experienced significant headwinds in bridal, first in weddings and now in engagements as a result of lockdowns influencing group events and dating. Through fiscal 23, Signet was still up 16% in overall revenue, excluding acquisitions versus pre-COVID, and our primary COVID benefit will come as engagements begin recovery in Q4 of this year. Signet is no longer a dated mall retailer. Over the past five years, we have optimized our fleet, closing more than 1,000 doors and reducing our footprint 21%, primarily in lower-grade malls.
Today, 40% of our doors and more than 50% of our sales are off-mall, and our mall footprint is healthy with 50% of doors in A and B malls and 10% in C malls that are highly productive. We have no exposure to D malls. Beyond that, we've complemented our physical fleet with a growing online and mobile presence, with about 20% of sales coming from online purchases, up from approximately 5% prior to beginning our transformation, delivering a 50% increase in sales per sq ft. Signet is much less cyclical than most of retail. Half of our merchandise sales are in bridal, which has a long and sustainable history of stability and predictable growth that we're confident will return after a short-term COVID impact. We have addressed legacy overhang issues. Our leadership team is relatively new.
The average tenure and role of our senior leaders is about 4 years. We bring a diverse mix of industry and technical expertise in areas that are important competitive advantages. Together, we've not only established our growth trajectory, but have also systematically disposed of the overhang issues that were previously holding Signet back, including litigation, high debt leverage, and cultural issues. We've been modernizing this company in every way, including our talent. With respect to credit, we fully eliminated consumer credit risk from our balance sheet and now have strong relationships with third-party service providers. We have 44% financial services penetration across our robust menu of financial services offerings, including private label credit cards, leasing, and split pay, none of which create balance sheet risk. Having addressed these misconceptions, I'm excited to now answer the question we most want to focus on today: Why Signet?
The most fundamental answer to this question is that Signet is a leading and differentiated retailer with scaled competitive advantages in an attractive and fragmented market, driving consistent shareholder returns. Signet's return since the beginning of our transformation has outperformed the XRT by 2 times and the S&P 500 by over 1.5 times. Our vision for Signet is simple. We will enable all people to celebrate life and express love with jewelry. This rallying cry for our team flows directly from our purpose to inspire love in the world. We are a people-first company providing high quality, beautifully designed, accessible, and affordable jewelry, world-class services, and memorable experiences to build lifetime relationships between our customers and Signet. To do this, we've built a company that is unique in jewelry in several ways.
First, we have a diverse portfolio of banners that we have strategically positioned to serve approximately 80% of U.S. category spend. Secondly, we have a strong balance sheet and are able to generate cash to fund investments in our business and to reward shareholders. We have a critical set of competitive advantages that grow stronger and wider every year. Third, we've built a flexible operating model that enables us to generate a sustainable annual double-digit non-GAAP operating margin year in and year out. Because approximately 40% of our SG&A is variable, we have the agility to pivot quickly in response to consumer or macro changes. Finally, we are far and away the U.S. jewelry market share leader by a margin of at least threefold, which gives us scale advantages in costs as well as leading innovation. This is an important point.
The jewelry category is highly fragmented because it has been historically driven by physical brick-and-mortar presence and local relationships. In fact, independent jewelers still represent roughly 2/3 of specialty jewelry sales, and we would expect some consolidation ahead. As the only scaled player, we are investing to disrupt this historical construct with scaled capabilities, including digital and data and a unified retail experience that would be very hard, if not impossible, for others to match. These distinct advantages work like a flywheel that enables consistent business and market share growth year after year. It starts with the power of our differentiated portfolio of banners. When we began our transformation, we had considerable overlap, and were reaching approximately 37% of the available market.
Today, through our portfolio differentiation and expansion, we are reaching 80%, We are expanding the market as we appeal to younger, more diverse, more affluent, and more digitally savvy customers. It's enabled by our flexible annual double-digit non-GAAP operating margin structure and working capital efficiencies that generate substantial cash flow to reinvest in our business and return cash to shareholders. For example, we've delivered $800 million in free cash flow each year on average over the course of our transformation so far. It's guided by our disciplined approach to capital allocation. We've invested nearly $750 million over the past 5 years to modernize our store fleet, add technology to our stores, upgrade our websites, and launch proprietary digital features to create the leading unified retail experience in jewelry.
It results in our ability to grow our capabilities and widen the moat we've built around our business. Our strengths in areas such as digital and data analytics, personalization, sourcing, and culture have created a significant advantage that our unscaled industry peers are hard-pressed to match. It's a virtuous cycle. The more share our banners gain and the more scale we develop, the stronger our results, which enables consistent growth and cash generation that we invest to extend our advantages, which we believe in turn enables us to increase our share gains even further. This flywheel effect is a competitive advantage that we will continue to strengthen over time. At the center of all we do are our people and the culture of agility, innovation, and performance in which they thrive. We have significantly transformed our culture, and it has become a true source of competitive advantage.
Over the past five years, we have invested in our team in a number of ways, including wage increases and enhanced benefits. One important investment in our people is training and development. We are offering what I believe is best-in-class training through what we call Brilliant University. This holistic training program improves customer experiences, drives execution and agility, and enables improved performance and career growth for every team member who participates in the program. These investments matter. Through what many have called the Great Resignation, Signet saw reduced turnover. In fact, our field team retention topped 80% in fiscal 2023, ahead of retail benchmarks. Our employee survey scores are strong, including 89% saying, "I understand how my work contributes to Signet's purpose," which is up 28 points since 2018.
We've achieved top external recognition for our culture as well, from Bloomberg Gender Equality, Great Place to Work, and Fortune. Finally, an extremely important part of Signet's cultural advantage is the tone from the top that comes from our board. Under Chairman Todd Stitzer's leadership, we have built a board with the right diversity of skills, experiences, age, gender, and ethnicity to represent our consumer base, inspire our team, and deliver productive board dialogue and input. 58% of our board is diverse, with an average tenure of 6.4 years. Further, their skills include expertise in retail, digital, finance, and beyond, and are exactly what Signet needs to stay nimble, anticipate change, and build competitive advantage in today's uncertain world. This board is a competitive advantage for Signet. With the strength of our performance to date and the continuing advantages of our flywheel, we've updated our midterm goals.
We are striving to reach a $9 billion-$10 billion revenue target, which we're confident we can achieve, particularly as engagements return to normal levels. We intend to continue delivering double-digit non-GAAP annual operating margin with an updated range of 11%-12%. We are targeting to grow our US market share to a range of 11%-12%, we are committing to reach non-GAAP EPS in a range of $14-$16 per share, which contemplates continued investment in the business and dividend growth, does not include the impact of share buybacks. It is our intention to continue using share repurchase as a healthy part of our capital allocation, given our remaining authorization of approximately $765 million. With these new goals established, let's take a closer look at the key building blocks.
There are 4 primary building blocks on our path from $7.8 billion in revenue, where we ended fiscal 2023, and the high end of our $10 billion goal. We expect approximately $600 million from the engagement tailwinds, which will begin in Q4 of fiscal 2024 and continue through fiscal 2027. A large portion of this growth will come in our big business banners, Kay and Zales. As we've positioned these two banners to target different customers, we've also differentiated their assortments, marketing, digital and store experiences, and loyalty offerings, enabling us to grow both simultaneously. Growth in accessible luxury represents over $1 billion, including benefits of bridal tailwinds and share gain efforts. This includes Jared, Diamonds Direct, James Allen, and Blue Nile. Both Jared and Diamonds Direct will benefit from store expansion into markets we've identified as strong, accessible luxury targets, in addition to continued merchandise uptiering.
Following their back office integration this summer, we will have positioned James Allen and Blue Nile combined to achieve $1 billion in sales through scaled growth initiatives. We've already grown accessible luxury from 22% of Signet sales in fiscal 20 to 30% in fiscal year 2023. We believe we can reach close to $3.5 billion combined in the coming years. Services is the glue that helps create lifetime value. We will continue to grow services through extended service plans, repair, loyalty, and a more aggressive push into customers' growing desire for creating custom jewelry. We anticipate an additional $500 million growth in services, taking it to a $1.2 billion revenue business.
Finally, we expect share gains worth $450 million as our digital and data capabilities continue to mature and we can increasingly personalize and target our marketing. Our scale and banner differentiation are growing advantages, particularly as we expect a return to independent closures during this timeframe. This growth is well-balanced across our portfolio, with about 20% in services, 30% in Kay and Zales, and 50% in our accessible luxury banners. During today's presentation, my team will take you through each of these building blocks in more detail. If you walk away with one thought from today, I want it to be this: Signet delivered strong results last year against a meaningful headwind in our most important category, a double-digit decline in engagements, which is continuing in fiscal 2024.
Jamie is going to talk about the engagement gap a bit later on, but I want to reinforce that we expect engagement headwinds to abate beginning at the end of this year. We've been anticipating this coming tailwind and investing to make sure we capture disproportionate growth as engagements return. We expect this to drive significant upside in our business over the coming years because the category will need to grow approximately 25% by calendar year 2026 just to return to prior engagement levels. This is especially valuable to Signet because bridal is intentionally and strategically an overdeveloped part of our mix, with 50% of Signet's merchandise sales in bridal, compared to 20% for the jewelry category. Another key area of competitive advantage that I'd like to dive into is our differentiated portfolio of banners.
It's key to our ability to pivot and take advantage of where we anticipate the market is moving. Some of you have asked questions about our banner portfolio, like, "How are the banners different?" "Do we need so many?" I believe the answer is clear. We have intentionally and strategically designed a portfolio that addresses how consumers think about the category. Let me explain in a bit more detail how consumers shop the jewelry category. There are 3 primary vectors of segmentation. The first is journey or occasion, answering the question, "Why am I shopping?" There are 3 primary jewelry shopping journeys, which we refer to as bridal, comprised of engagement rings, wedding bands, and anniversary bands. Gifting, which is buying jewelry for someone else, usually as a romantic or sentimental gift for a birthday, anniversary, holiday, or life milestone.
Self-purchase, which is buying jewelry for oneself as an expression of style, a lasting accessory, or a reward. The second vector of segmentation is price point, answering the question, "What's my budget?" We consider 5 quintiles of price points in fine jewelry, from value to luxury. Signet sells merchandise across all these price tiers with primary focus on mid-fine, fine, and accessible luxury. The final vector of segmentation is psychographic or attitudinal orientation, which answers the question, "How do I think about gifts and jewelry?" This one deserves a bit more explanation. This is the most differentiating segmentation vector and one which we believe Signet uniquely understands and is leveraging. Through extensive quantitative and qualitative research, we have mapped the consumer psyche around jewelry to uncover 5 segments that represent 80% of jewelry category demand.
I won't go into great detail, but I'm always happy to share as much as you'd like to know at a later time. Confident creatives, an $11 billion segment, like to mix and match their own styles to create individualized looks. Statement makers see jewelry as an expression of their style. They want to show off their good taste and be on trend. Generous sentimentalists, the largest segment at $17 billion, think of jewelry as a thoughtful expression of their sentimental or romantic emotions. Extroverted romantics think love is a big deal and express it extravagantly. Savvy affluents are smart shoppers. They value quality and are most likely to seek certified diamonds as a validation of their choice. Both confident creatives and bold statement makers think of jewelry as an expression of self, and these segments, while also represented in bridal, skew to self-purchase.
The segments on the right tend to see jewelry more as an expression of love, and they skew more toward gifting and bridal. You can also see that these segments cross price tiers from value to luxury. Let's overlay Signet's banners on this segmentation. What you can see is that each banner tailors its merchandise assortments, store experiences, and marketing to specific customer mindsets. You can also see that we've chosen to differentiate our banners somewhat by price tier, with Banter skewing more toward value and mid-fine and accessible luxury banners at the higher end. Finally, you can see that competition also fits this segmentation, with department stores skewing to the left, at independents across the middle, and Costco on the right. This is one reason why Zales and Banter have been successful at acquiring share from department stores, and Kay, Jared, and the others from independents.
I hope this helps answer some of your questions about the category and why Signet's banner portfolio is so well-positioned to gain market share. If you'd like to see more, we've prepared a video on banner differentiation that will be running during the break. As I hand over to the balance of our team, I'll just transition by coming back to where I started. We want you to see the same growth potential in Signet we see. We want you to take away that Signet is a transformed company. We plan to grow on the strength of our vision, our differentiated banner portfolio, the flexible operating model we've developed, and the distinctive capabilities we are continuing to grow. We are already having success leveraging these capabilities, but we have more room to grow. Our connected commerce experience is now increasingly leveraging AI and analytics to drive business gains.
The launch of our customer data platform is producing valuable use cases of personalized marketing and content that increases conversion. Our cost structure is improving through scaled work with strategic vendors and increasing vertical integration. Based on everything we're seeing from our data-driven insights and customers, we're confident that we're headed into a favorable environment for consistent, sustainable growth and are well-positioned to make the most of the tailwinds that will come from that environment. On that note, I'll turn the presentation over to Bill Brace and then come back for Q&A with just a couple of closing comments. Bill?
Thank you, Jenna. Good morning, everyone. I'm Bill Brace. I'm the president of Kay. I'm delighted to be here today to talk about our most important category, which is bridal. I'm eager to share how we've established our leadership position and how we will deliver on the $600 million opportunity that Jenna just outlined. You know, why do we call out bridal as our most important category? At $12.5 billion, it represents 20% of the jewelry category. This alone makes it a critical segment. Looking at it this way really undersells its strategic importance. Quite simply, it is the emotional and financial gateway to the jewelry category. This makes it the fountainhead for the relationships we cultivate to maximize lifetime value for our customers.
Make no mistake, each bridal purchase in and of itself is significant. The average unit sale for bridal, excluding Diamonds Direct and Blue Nile, is $1,688, which is almost 7 times higher than other jewelry purchase occasions. The bonds we create translate into purchases for other life events and multiply the value of the original purchase. When the anniversaries and birthdays roll around or the birth of a child occurs, the bridal customer has a higher propensity to celebrate with jewelry. In fact, bridal shoppers are 56% more likely to shop with us within 12 months, and they spend over $200 more than non-bridal customers. They do this because they have embraced the emotional significance of jewelry to celebrate and enrich life's most important moments and relationships.
Once we've made a bridal sale, we immediately look to serve our customer holistically and provide a lifetime of service. 72% of engagement sales also include a warranty plan, which adds an average of $215 to the transaction and providing a lifetime of security for the customer. We input their data into our clienteling system and sign them up for the loyalty program, which provides benefits towards future jewelry purchases. These connections deepen the relationships and generate data that enables us to curate a lifetime relationship. That's just the beginning. Once we help a couple choose their engagement ring, we help them select wedding gifts for each other and the bridal party. Jewelry represents 43% of the gifts couples give during wedding-related activities, which we estimate to be a $1.9 billion spend.
This includes a new pair of earrings for the mother of the bride or cufflinks for the groom. The immense trust and joy we create through the bridal process positions our banners to be the lifetime destination for anniversaries, birthdays, graduations, promotions, and all of life's celebrations that we commemorate with jewelry. This is why bridal is so important to Signet. Within this most strategic and consequential segment of the jewelry category, we are the undisputed leader. We have strategically developed our position and have a dollar share exceeding 30%. This share position is multiples ahead of our competitors, I can't think of another company that has such a substantial share of one of life's most important moments. Your first car, your first home, your first child. Imagine a company with 30% share of those moments.
We've built our leadership share by positioning our banners to be at the heart of the engagement purchase journey and consistently evolving to meet changing customers' preferences. Similar to other retail categories, the engagement purchase journey has changed dramatically over the last 15 to 20 years. It has become grounded in digital channels and has empowered customers with more education and pricing transparency. These changes have provided us with the opportunity to assert our competitive advantages in order to disrupt and reinvent jewelry retail. We've strengthened every part of our funnel and improved every aspect of the customer experience. We have created an unmatched digital experience while strengthening human connection and relationships in our stores. Today, 90% of bridal customers begin their engagement purchase journey online. This is up from 66% in 2019.
They are craving education and inspiration. Our digital strength allows us to connect with them when and where they want. Now Rebecca's gonna talk more about this. We have been aggressively investing in innovations that delight our customers in this phase. With website features including visualization tools like virtual try-on and virtual on-demand consultation via chat, call, or video. In many ways, we see our digital capabilities and experiences as a powerful disruptive force versus the balance of the category, especially independents. They simply don't have the ability to compete with the same sophistication and scale in this part of the funnel. Their historical competitive advantage tied to the power of generational relationships, which served as their upper, mid, and lower funnel. Today's customers are flowing through a different funnel.
Their digital experiences raise questions whether or not their local independent is really the best path to continue their journey. Modern brides and grooms are telling us that they like the experiences we're creating. Our digital NPS score or Net Promoter Score has grown to 74 versus 64 just 3 years ago. Despite all these changes, there's one enduring need that has not changed. Brides and grooms still crave trust and a worry-free purchase, and we are uniquely positioned to be their first choice. After starting online, 81% of customers finalize their purchase in store for bridal. On top of the emotional significance, the combination of low purchase frequency, one for most people, hopefully, and high level of investment, this can make jewelry purchase, you know, an intimidating process. The stakes are high, and they wanna get it right.
The trust created by a face-to-face human experience is an essential requirement to make them feel confident in their purchase. No other competitor can create this trusted human experience with the scale and the quality that we do. In the same way we have innovated to create a more compelling digital experience, we have also innovated to enhance the effectiveness and trust created by our jewelry consultants in store. We have developed new clienteling capabilities, social selling, digital tools for customization, and flexible fulfillment. We are analyzing data captured from the digital journey to help enable personalized recommendations. We are nurturing the relationship to ease any anxieties regarding the purchase and help them find the engagement ring of their dreams. Our customers have noticed and appreciate these enhancements as well, as reflected by our store NPS scores, up to 80 versus 75 3 years ago.
In addition to our jewelry consultants, we have other competitive advantages that uniquely nurture trust. First, our banners have the strongest awareness and consideration in the industry. More than 80% of customers are aware of Kay, Jared, and Zales, and more than 60% have these brands in their consideration set. Kay and Zales have the highest brand preference in jewelry over all competition. Second, we have the largest fleet of stores with 2,808 stores across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. This physical presence builds confidence that we are a big, stable company they can trust, we will always be there when they need us. Third, we carry exclusive leading bridal brands like Neil Lane, Leo, Vera Wang, and Chosen. Just like other retail categories, brands matter, and they enhance confidence, particularly among younger and multicultural customers.
Fourth, the superior selection and pricing transparency on our websites mitigates purchase anxiety. Our virtual inventory websites allows our customers to explore more than 535,000 loose diamonds at 40 times magnification, which builds confidence they're making the best possible purchase decision. Finally, our services, including warranty plans, Diamond Bond, trade-in-trade-up policy, and repair services create a seamless, stress-free experience for every customer and enhance the jewelry ownership experience. Net, no other competitor is able to assemble and harness the capabilities we have to match the personalized experience for every customer at every occasion, both online and in store. As significant as our leadership position is, we believe we can drive even more growth. We see so much opportunity to grow and extend it, and we will achieve this with more disruptive innovation inspired by the evolving needs, preferences, and expectations of our customers.
What are we hearing from brides and grooms today, and how will we continue to create new experiences that delight them? The first big theme is the way today's brides and grooms are seeking self-empowerment and self-exploration. They're increasingly taking control of their purchase journey, and this is why the majority start online. They want to explore and learn at their own pace, and this extends into store and the store experience. Our newest stores are designed to include features like brass and glass assortments that bring jewelry out of the case to enable customers to touch, feel, and explore at their own pace. Our new stores are more open with gathering tables and displays that put the jewelry consultants and the customers on the same side to make the interaction less intimidating and more trusting. A second key theme is that they're seeking more personalization.
If you've been to a wedding lately, you may have noticed that everything from the wedding party's shoes to the venue to the menu is more personalized and unique than ever. They wanna break the mold and express their individuality. They want their jewelry to similarly express their unique relationship. As a result, we've made it easier than ever for our customers to customize their jewelry from simple engraving to our best-in-class configurators at James Allen and Blue Nile to fully bespoke custom at The Jared Foundry and the Kay Unites. By personalizing our offerings at scale, we can increase customer attachment and drive higher price points. A third theme is that brides and grooms are more diverse often entering engagement at a later life stage. They are more mature, they're more affluent, and they have higher expectations for our products and services.
We've tiered up our assortment and enriched our service offerings which increase average transaction value. We are also catering to LGBTQ and ethnically diverse bridal customers who now constitute 40% of new engagements. To win in bridal, we need to win with these customers. To better reach and connect with these customers, we are fine-tuning our designs and materials to resonate with them, such as incorporating yellow gold for Hispanics and more genderful engagement designs. If I were to characterize Signet's view, kind of as Jenna talked about, we are quite bullish on the bridal category and believe it is poised to serve as a long-term tailwind for our business. It's true, COVID has created unprecedented volatility in the bridal market, far more so than the global financial crisis.
However, the headwinds we're encountering today will lead to a strong boost in the bridal market in the coming years, one that we are prepared to capitalize on before it settles back into a steady low single-digit growth profile. Compounding this underlying growth potential is the steady growth in average selling price, which is up 3% year-on-year on average from fiscal year 18 to fiscal year 20-23, excluding Blue Nile and Diamonds Direct. This profile is attractive. Consistency is a rare thing in retail, and it allows for exceptional planning, forecasting, and confidence that the capital we're investing to drive market share gains will reward our customers and our shareholders alike. With Kay being Signet's biggest banner, my team and I bear a special responsibility to lead the growth and development of bridal.
We are full steam ahead in positioning Kay to capture outsized relevance when engagements begin to return at the end of this year and beyond. Our first priority is modernizing the engagement journey, and we will continue to lead the development of disruptive innovations online and in-store inspired by the brides and grooms of today and tomorrow. We will create new experiences that cater to their desire for more self-empowerment and personalization and put greater emphasis on multicultural and hyperlocal targeting. We know these are real windows for growth for us, and we will position Kay for growth over the decade to come. Ultimately, if you leave here today with one thought, I want it to be Signet is bridal, and I want you to know that's a great thing.
It's a huge potential tailwind for Kay and the entire Signet banner portfolio that we have been working hard to capitalize on. We're excited to lead this incredibly attractive business into the future in the years ahead. I will now turn it over to Claudia Cividino, who will tell you a little bit more about our growth in accessible luxury. Claudia.
Thank you, Bill. Good morning, everyone. My name is Claudia Cividino. I joined the Signet team in November 2022 as the new President of Jared. I'm excited to talk to you today about the new strategic view I'm taking to this business and how Jared fits into the larger picture of accessible luxury. Signet has been investing in accessible luxury since the James Allen acquisition at the beginning of the transformation. We believe that the accessible luxury market is a substantial growth opportunity for Signet. Now we intend to capitalize on this opportunity more decisively by leveraging our scale, our extensive capabilities, our positioning in key markets, and our digital assets.
Accessible luxury is a tier of luxury, and in jewelry, it refers to a category of jewelry that combines high-quality materials in precious metals, gemstones, and diamonds that are crafted using more efficient production methods and at scale. It touches items priced between $1,000 and $3,000. Now, this approach creates an opportunity to offer premium product with a more accessible but still aspirational price point. Jewelry is customarily purchased for three main purposes bridal, gifting, and self-purchase. Among jewelry purchasers, trends continue to show higher-priced purchases of $1,000 and above increasing across income ranges, particularly among middle and higher-income customers. For example, we know that 37% of all fine jewelry buyers bought at least one item costing $1,000 or more in the past three years.
For customers with incomes of $100,000 or above, that number rises to 49%. What we're focused on over the past 3 years, and for me, just over 5 months, is accelerating our portfolio to capture share in accessible luxury. You can see this from our primary accessible luxury banners, Jared, Diamonds Direct, James Allen, and Blue Nile, which are all targeting customers in this specific market in distinct ways according to their banner value propositions. This acceleration is clearly paying off. We have seen a 76% total sales growth over 3 years in these banners. We expect the accessible luxury market will grow mid-single digits in the midterm. As we refine our strategy, we have room to grow. For example, we have recently acquired Diamonds Direct and Blue Nile, expanding our presence in the accessible luxury category.
We will leverage our banners as the vehicles through which we will drive this growth, we are already seeing green shoots of success as we've delivered consistently. What we're focusing on now is to accelerate this execution. We see accessible luxury as an over $1 billion opportunity. In the past few years, this tier has grown from just under $1.5 billion at a 22% share to total Signet to $2.4 billion, a 30% share. We have invested over $1 billion into this segment of the market, we have been able to deliver an 8% CAGR in our accessible luxury banners. Having built this strong base, I am confident that we're going to be positioned well to capture this $1 billion opportunity.
Within accessible luxury, one of our banners, James Allen, delivered a 22% CAGR between fiscal 2018 and 2022 by leveraging its distinct strengths and banner value proposition. We have also grown margin 1,000 basis points and made it the center of buying diamonds for Signet. We still see opportunity to grow and to apply the same success model to the acquisition of Blue Nile. At Signet, we have seen growth in the $1,000 and above segment across the board with these price points surpassing $4 billion in sales and growing 50% over the past 3 years. This represents more revenue than any other U.S. jewelry retail generates in total.
When we look at this data in more detail, we're able to see that within accessible luxury banners, this same segment has grown 128% over the same period of time. This is validating our investment and our expansion, including the acquisition of our digital banners. Through driving digital banners, real estate expansion of Diamonds Direct, and continuing to leverage full service offerings from Jared, which we see as the entry banner for consumers into accessible luxury, we're taking a portfolio approach to this tier. At Diamonds Direct, we are focusing on doubling the pace of store openings, extending our reach to even more key markets. At Jared, we are focusing on growing up to $500 million through the banner value proposition and how it expresses itself in our stores, online, our product, and our experiences.
In our digital banners, we see the opportunity to scale our access to the accessible luxury consumer. As we continue to lean into this business opportunity, our goal is to grow James Allen and Blue Nile as a combined business to $1 billion. Our portfolio approach to accessible luxury positions us well to not only grow our digital banners, but invite customers to move up the value chain through Jared in innovative ways. Let's talk about the offerings at Jared which apply to our accessible luxury portfolio at large. We are investing in the right technology and enhancements to ensure that our customers continue to think of Jared when they wanna make a purchase for themselves, a loved one, or a special celebration.
Just over the past year, Jared has made significant progress in driving banner awareness through high-income consumers at $100,000 and above from 69%-80% and banner consideration from 51%-55%. Online, we are improving assortments, user experience, and shopability, introducing shop similar functions and virtual try-ons through new capabilities from our digital team. Our advanced technological capabilities also extend to our in-store applications such as clienteling tools, which our jewelry consultants leverage to stay connected to clients and ensure that we are proactively meeting their needs and their wants. One of our strategic priorities is enhancing the in-store experience for our customers. We are revitalizing the Jared store experience in five markets through a matrixed approach which touches 30 pilot stores. We will elevate the stores within these markets through product investments at the high-end of the fashion segment with European fashion brands.
In bridal, we will elevate our branded offering and leverage the customization capabilities we have in our high-end proprietary collection called Chosen. In timepieces, we will showcase our Swiss luxury brands. We plan brand-building investments in CapEx and visual merchandising to elevate the look and feel of our environments and investments in local marketing and events. In an early test of the pilot, which we launched just before Valentine's Day with a few stores, we are seeing a 20% improvement in sales trend year-over-year versus the balance of the fleet, and a 40% growth in average transaction value. These early wins are confirmation that the pilot approach has measurable incremental upside, which will impact the back half of this year and which we will scale more broadly in the future. We are elevating our comprehensive assortment and store experience.
In the forefront of our suite of services is our custom design studio, The Foundry, which is present in 57% of Jared stores. Customers that participate in this purchase journey spend 2 times that of our average Jared guest in a single transaction. We are just beginning to develop these capabilities and maximize further on this investment. These pilot markets were selected by leveraging our proprietary greenfield data. This analysis brought forward the opportunity to refine our positioning in existing Jared markets and to identify opportunities in places where we may not have been historically. Whether an A, B, or C market area, what we're noticing is the change of distribution of wealth since COVID. We're strategically placing ourselves in these markets to serve these new customers. For example, Dallas is one of the markets in which we will deploy our pilot strategy.
The Dallas-Fort Worth metro area and surrounding MSAs present a large market opportunity for accessible luxury penetration. Our footprint is still very small. We're growing share of higher price points in local markets such as Dallas, and our customer insights reveal that trends continue to show high price purchases increasing across income ranges, demographics, and regions. With a balanced business between bridal, fashion jewelry, and fashion and luxury timepieces, we serve a wide range of customers. Whether they are self-purchasers or gifters, we offer an unmatched full suite of repair, care, and financial services, as well as custom design studios through The Jared Foundry. Our jewelry consultants are highly trained, and we offer exceptional service. This comprehensive offering bolsters our ability to capitalize on this accessible luxury opportunity.
Within bridal, a bridal set is often the most important piece of jewelry someone may buy in their lifetime. We want to continue to be the trusted option when someone is ready to make that important purchase. Thanks to our unrivaled access to high quality loose diamonds, we are able to completely customize and personalize an engagement ring. Our jewelry consultants are experts in guiding a client through that process. We have developed strong proprietary brands as well as powerful partnerships with branded bridal collections such as TACORI, Vera Wang, and Pnina Tornai, innovators in the bridal industry. Within fashion, we lead by bringing in the self-purchaser and inspiring gifting with important brands like Shy, which appeal to a more trend-focused consumer, and our beautiful Le Vian legacy brand.
In the fashion category, we have strong proprietary businesses in Italian gold and diamond fashion, which we are able to tier up into more aspirational price points. As Jared has grown, fashion has continued to hold penetration. We believe that it is an important ingredient in accessible luxury as we speak directly to the empowered male and female self-purchaser. Within timepieces, we serve our customers with iconic fashion brands such as Citizen, Bulova, Movado. We also tier up to Swiss luxury brands such as Frederique Constant, TAG Heuer, Baume & Mercier, and Longines, among others. Within digital, the scale of our clienteling database is a significant advantage. We have the capabilities to reach our client really in the right way at the right time with the right offering.
Clienteling exists as a tool and a platform. It is also a mindset, and it's an ingrained behavior, and it's part of how we build trust over time between our clients and our jewelry consultants. Our digital banners leverage highly advanced digital capabilities to source diamonds at scale. They thereby deliver an unparalleled offering to our customers. Real estate is a difference maker for the value proposition of both Jared and Diamonds Direct. One of our key differentiators is that we are ingrained in the local communities that we serve. Within services, every Jared location has a design and service center which is staffed by artisans. We understand that clients wear pieces which have meaning and relevance in their lives and to their personal stories. Therefore, there will be wear and tear on a jewelry piece over a customer's lifetime.
We know that we can position ourselves right where the customer needs us, offering them a comprehensive breadth of service offerings. We are emphasizing relationship building to drive repeat and referral purchases. Jared was the first banner to launch loyalty, and of the members enrolled today, 40% are actively engaged in this program. They spend approximately $600 more than our non-loyalty guests on their first purchase, and a quarter of these guests have had a repeat purchase since joining the program. Lastly, we are improving the in-store experience by driving localized events and activations to give our clients reasons to return and explore. With nearly 60% of Jared's sales at a price over $2,000 and this category growing in the mid-single digits, Jared shows the potential to tier up at scale.
We know that while we are more decisively elevating the banner, our clients are also taking us there. The biggest growth comes as we move up the value chain with purchases at $10,000 and above, which represent 10% of total business growing at 58% year-over-year. This is validating our research and our data, which shows that we are able to penetrate deeper into the accessible luxury market with Jared as a main vehicle. Before I close, let me summarize how we will approach accessible luxury in terms of executing on our strategy. Signet has a proven track record of winning. We will win further in luxury by one: doubling the pace of openings on our Diamonds Direct footprint, expanding into new markets and new demographics. Two: leveraging our scale, our capabilities, and our market insights to grow Jared by up to $500 million.
Three, capitalizing on our unique and best-in-class digital capabilities to push even further into accessible luxury territories with our digital banners, James Allen and Blue Nile. Putting all of this together, I am confident we can continue to win at higher price points. We know this strategy has momentum behind it already, and I'm excited to layer my vision for Jared and accessible luxury within Signet more broadly. I look forward to bringing this tier of luxury to our customers on a larger scale. With that, I'll pass it over to Joan Hilson to talk more in depth about our services offering.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Claudia. I'm really pleased to be here with all of you today. I'm Joan Hilson, as Claudia said, and I'm the Chief Financial Strategy Services and Financial Officer for Signet. Services is a key aspect of our business that really changes the way consumers engage with jewelry, and as a result, strengthens our extended relationship with our customers. Our goal in services is to reach $1.2 billion in revenue, nearly $500 million in growth by providing a wide range of offerings that help customers wear their jewelry worry-free, keep their jewelry looking like new, customize products to their individual style, and reap the rewards of our loyalty program. We offer a portfolio of financial services to our customers through our third-party service providers that can accommodate the payment needs of our diverse customer base.
What sets Signet apart is our ability to create a multitude of touch points with customers. Spanning our portfolio of banners, we had more than 6 million enrollments last year in our warranty programs, and we served more than 1 million customers through our repair business. We generated nearly half a million transactions in customized jewelry and have enrolled more than 2 million members in our Vault Rewards program since we launched it last year. We had 44% payment penetration through our financing options, enabling customers to purchase for themselves or give the gift of jewelry to celebrate life and express love. It's a robust set of services, and with the many opportunities we have to engage customers, we have plenty of room to keep growing. Our scale and investment in services are unparalleled in our industry.
These investments are profitable because one-third of services customers return for a repeat purchase, compared to one-fifth for merchandise-only customers. They spend more than three times the merchandise-only customer, demonstrating the trust and value of service experiences that extend our relationships with customers and carry a 20% premium to merchandise margins. We have invested more than $41 million in the last 3 years, which includes Jared Foundry, technology integration, and digital innovation. We will continue to invest to improve our service and drive innovation. As an example of innovation, Rocksbox offers not only jewelry subscriptions, but just yesterday, we launched a bridal event rental program in our Zales banner.
This new program, catering to brides, bridal parties, and special occasion renters, will be powered by a new digital landing page with a lookbook that enables customers to browse our assortment online along with an appointment scheduler for participating Zales stores. This program will also have its own assortment designed exclusively for rental in 10K white gold and lab-created diamonds. Turning to repair. We know that repair service is the number one priority for our customer. It has become a fundamental differentiator within our services portfolio. We invested nearly $23 million to improve the repair experience, resulting in a 37% efficiency improvement in repair turnaround time, which now averages less than four days.
We implemented our repair tracker, which enables customers to monitor the progress of their repair, eliminating the anxiety that can come with handing over a piece of precious jewelry, even to a skilled jeweler for repair. We also simplified the repair experience by offering repair bundles, which received a positive response from customers and from jewelry consultants importantly, all while improving profitability. This combination of all of these improvements resulted in a Net Promoter Score for core services of 64, an 11-point increase. We are currently servicing more than 4 million repairs per year with a capacity to support 6.4 million repairs per year in North America. We clearly have capacity for growth. Our repair footprint enables us to serve customers nationwide. Our network contains more than 260 locations with more than 1,850 jewelers.
This national network enables us to keep setting the bar higher with opportunities for B2B repair services and mailing capabilities, among other offerings. Custom jewelry is another significant opportunity for growth. We estimate the custom jewelry market size to be roughly $33 billion. We believe we have more than 2 points of share opportunity just based on our scale and our market position. This translates to a longer-term potential of $700 million in incremental revenue. Custom jewelry includes customer design products where you can co-create a bespoke piece of jewelry with a skilled artisan. Over the last three years, we've invested in 127 Jared Foundry locations that are equipped with CounterSketch technology, and we're piloting this technology in 7 Kay locations as well.
Most recently, we have rolled out a pilot for virtual capabilities in Kay to provide custom services for our online customers. The benefit of coupling this technology with our skilled jewelers is that it should enable us to achieve our goal of shortening turnaround time from 12 weeks to 4 weeks. We are also scaling custom capabilities for bracelets, earrings, and necklaces. All of this is aimed at leveraging our physical locations while combining technology and craftsmanship to drive towards the full potential of this opportunity. In addition, our banners provide several options to create custom jewelry by using more than 25 configurators that are select from options and can be used in-store or online. Customers can personalize jewelry with engravings, birthstones, or reconfigure an existing piece as well.
We also host events and trunk shows that enable our customers to meet with celebrity designers. We plan to bring more of these events to our stores and online experiences. Overall, we are investing in new technology, capability, and infrastructure towards our midterm goal of $250 million in repair services, including customization, B2B, and mail and repair. Our warranty programs are our customers' second most important service option after repair. We offer several plans that provide for lifetime protection and worry-free wear. These plans currently have a 40% attachment rate across our business and are most popular in bridal, which has an attachment rate of 72% on average across our banners. We have improved attachment rates nearly 200 basis points, driven by digital enhancement and training of our jewelry and customer care consultants.
This effort is to ensure our customers understand the full benefits of our worry-free plans. With the anticipated tailwinds and engagement, we are confident we have room to grow in services as well. In addition, we launched post-purchase warranty plans online just two weeks ago and plan to offer these plans in store in the back half of fiscal 2024. We will also be launching warranty plans for post-repair jewelry and for merchandise not purchased at Signet. We will leverage clienteling to reach out to customers through our marketing efforts, which is enabled by our personalized marketing initiatives. Overall, our goal for growth in warranty plans is up to $250 million. Our loyalty program is also an important growth driver for Signet through customer acquisition, retention, and purchase frequency.
This program enhances our ability to capture rich customer data, which informs our personalization of customer journeys through clienteling and more effective marketing. We launched our loyalty program, Vault Rewards, last year at Jared, which now has more than 19% of sales attributed to loyalty members. We rolled the program out to Kay and Zales in the back half of last year. We are exceeding accelerated membership adoption. We currently have more than 2 million loyalty members with a goal of roughly 10 million members over the long terms. Members earn gem points for every dollar spent and receive bonus gems for the purchase of warranty plans. Our diamond tier represents our most loyal member who receives additional benefits on custom jewelry and have access to VIP and events and experiences.
We continue to test for more offerings and launch new benefits for all of our members. The behaviors of our loyalty members are showing us that our strategy is working. They are 1.8 times more likely to make a repeat purchase, and they spend 27% more on a purchase than non-loyalty members based on performance since rolling out this program. Our goal is to continue amplifying the effectiveness of our loyalty programs across banners to drive both customer acquisition and repeat purchase to reach an incremental $200 million in merchandise revenue over the midterm. We're also learning that our customers want increasing payment flexibility, and we provide a suite of third-party payment options to meet their needs. These include private label credit, installment loan, and leasing options, which are all available both in-store and online.
Our customers are responding with a 39% payment penetration rate in fiscal 20 23 on our private label programs, while leasing and installment products aggregated to a 5% penetration. Our private label program provides industry-leading activation and approval rates. Our active cardholders purchase on average between 1.5 to 2 times per year from Signet. We work closely with our third-party credit pro-providers to ensure that customers have options even in changing economic conditions. Our third-party agreements have appropriately aligned incentives that ensure approval rate and credit line assignment standards are consistently met. What I hope you take away from today is that services bridge across all of our banners, providing a wide range of offerings that improve customers' jewelry experience while providing meaningful revenue and margin upside as we continue to innovate and enhance our offerings.
We know the capabilities we're offering at scale result in greater conversion and retention, all driving significant lifetime value and continuing to prioritize services as a key pillar of our growth. On that note, let's pause for a 15-minute break. When we come back, we'll move from our where to play discussion into our scaling competitive advantages and how we are leveraging them to grow. We encourage you to take time to look at the videos over the break. See you back in 15.
Ladies and gentlemen, please return to your seats. Our presentation will resume shortly.
Okay. Good morning. My name is Rebecca Wooters. I'm the chief digital officer for Signet. I'm extremely excited to be here today. No problem. Pass on through. I'm even more excited to share the progress of our digital transformation and the reason I think you should believe in the years ahead. In 2020, we built our first digital product organization with the launch of an agile practice. This allowed us to deliver value to our customers quickly and continuously in short sprints. Today, we build adaptive, iterative roadmaps focused on customer needs. This is really important in our ability to pivot quickly, align with our business partners, and drive customer engagement in a disciplined way. What's good for our customers is great for business. We have more than doubled the ROI on our digital features.
Digital, as a % of sales, has grown 4 times that of our pre-transformation levels. We're winning because our teams are data-driven, we're agile, and we're customer-obsessed, empowering them to make state-of-the-art features and services. These teams have become more efficient as they are getting better and faster at sprint planning and delivery. From our original formation, our product team velocity has gone up 50%, producing more features and enhancements with the same number of teams, which carries our investment further as we evolve. We can now answer the question many had in their minds when we started this transformation. Will customers actually buy high-priced jewelry online? The answer is absolutely yes. We've introduced multiple experiences and that customers love and create more trust in their buying decision.
I'm not gonna name them all because we'd be here for a while, but I will tell you we've seen a six times higher conversion with customers who engage with just even one of these new features, and they include virtual try-on, product comparison, visual search, just to name a few. We also saw a 15% increase in checkout by enabling tools that just help build purchase confidence, offer payment flexibility, and steps that just removed, you know, friction from the process. We also launched several service options, including warranty plan attachment, and just last year we saw a 22% increase. The power of our digital transformation, though, is not just contained to our websites. Our connected commerce strategy has brought the power of digital technology to our stores as well. We know that purchase behavior is just not about one channel versus another anymore.
It's really the fluid journey of multiple touch points and experiences. We can lead customers in-store at the right times to jewelry consultants who, empowered by digital context, truly know them, their history, and what they care about. About 25% of our customers are leveraging flex fulfillment, such as buy online and pickup in store. With the convenience of those tools, we're seeing more sales after each interaction. Last year, changes to our CRM tool led to a 15% increase in assisted sales by clienteling efforts. The launch of personalized consultant emails as well as two-way SMS from both our virtual and in-store consultants is driving significant sales online and in-store. I'm gonna show you a demo here.
In this demonstration, on the right side, this is what an agent will see, you know, one of our consultants will see. This is just the view, you know, of the customer. This is just an example of a two-way SMS, and in this case, our consultant, Shirley, met with a customer who she showed, you know, multiple products to. This customer just can't stop thinking about those diamond hoop earrings that Shirley showed her. She asked Shirley via SMS to send her a picture so she can just look at them one more time. Once she sees that picture, she knows she absolutely has to have them and she wants to buy them. Shirley right there can add a cart page, text it back to the customer who then complete the purchase right then and there.
It's easy, it's secure, it's exciting, and it's fun for the customer. SMS is actually our fastest-growing communication channel, and it's leading to more in-store and virtual appointments, repeat sales, as well as loyalty engagement. Customers who engage with our virtual consultants while online convert 13 times more, and their average order is 3 times that of those who don't. While we are creating more high-intent digital customers, we are also using digital to enhance our human experience, and our customers are happier because of this focus. Our NPS jumps 15 points when a customer shops with the support of a virtual consultant. Putting the customer at the center and truly knowing them is paying off. Our Net Promoter Score has grown 13 points since the beginning of our transformation, and the retail average dropped 17 points in last year's numbers.
We think that number probably dropped again. It's an industry data point that's due out next month. We also introduced journey-level NPS, allowing us to focus on each step of the customer journey while iterating all of our digital roadmaps to remove friction and enhance those experiences. The reality is, as consumers have become savvier and they have higher expectations, Signet is ahead of the industry in meeting those expectations. Connected commerce and the intentional experience choices that we're making for our customers and our store is setting us apart from those in the industry. Understanding that, you know, the shopping and purchasing path is no longer linear, and using that information is encouraging retention and referral. Customers build relationships with businesses that know them, and when we can understand purchase paths and support customers with array of options that meet those lifestyle moments, we both win.
90% of our high-value customers engage with us both online and in-store for almost all journeys. 78% of all of our customers start online. This example is just illustrative of, you know, one of thousands of experience combinations a customer can have with us. It demonstrates the world and the power of our connected commerce strategy. As mentioned earlier, customers text quite a bit with us. They meet with our virtual consultants while online, and we can send a personalized email with a set of curated products, which often results in a sale, either online or in our store. A customer can, you know, purchase online with a consultant and pick up in store or any number of combinations.
In this particular example, our customer bought online, picked up, you know, in store, made another purchase, and then signed up for a new loyalty program. Understanding and responding to this world drives value to the business, and it just creates a happy customer. As we continue to understand and use data to fuel these experiences, we are moving now from a siloed use case scenario to that of AI-driven response. This is something that will self-learn, will become predictive, and proactively service our customers far beyond that of our independent competitors. Beyond the purchase, digital is also playing a critical role in enhancing our service and loyalty offerings. Service customers are 78% more likely to return for repeat purchase, and they spend 3 times that of our non-service customers.
Not only do we support the usage of the loyalty program through digital, but customers are absolutely loving the digital experience of our new Vault Rewards. Loyalty members who shop online are almost twice as likely to make a repeat purchase online than that of our non-loyalty members. The overall increase in our digital NPS that I mentioned earlier is correlated with the launch and expansion of Vault Rewards. In Q4, loyalty members rated NPS at about 5 points higher than non-loyalty. It just really further showcases the value and connection the program is providing our customers. This is another example of our service web offerings, and we have, you know, what we call Extended Service Agreement, ESA. We talked a little bit about it earlier.
We have introduced it online and on our, all product pages as well as our checkout flow. Our digital attachment rate just last year grew 200 basis points. We anticipate additional growth because we're not stopping there. Our adaptive and holistic strategy, as online customers come on, they can now manage their coverage at any point in the journey. I'm showing a couple of examples here. Last year, or actually at the beginning of this year, we launched a jewelry box feature. This is online. It houses basically all of your customer purchases. In Q2, customers will be able to click on any purchase within their jewelry box, and they can add an ESA, or they can, you know, schedule a repair, or they can even ask for an appraisal.
If they already have an ESA, they will see their digital paperwork associated with their purchases all in one place. Even better, this digital documentation can then even be added to their Apple and Google Wallet. Hopefully, you could see that a little bit in the example. What's next? Making a lot of changes today, but we're also preparing for tomorrow. This year we're going to embark on a multi-year transformation to modernize our tech framework focused on native mobile and AI expansion. With mobile traffic approaching about 90% now, we're going to start with a web rebuild. This will actually result, though, in a progressive web application that's going to evolve our website to look and behave as if it's a mobile app. Not only will this be more intuitive for our customers, but it's going to come with a ton of benefits.1 , faster SEO.
What does that mean? Faster SEO means better core web vitals, which results in a faster site, which is better search rankings, which equals more organic traffic and ultimately better funnel conversion. 2, it's going to allow us for easier customization across all of our banner websites. More importantly, it's going to allow us to share code between web and banner apps that we're planning to launch in the near term. Let's talk a little bit about an app. A native app is going to have several differentiating features for us. 1 is push notifications. This will be a brand-new marketing channel for us that we don't have today. 2, easy frictionless login with things like face ID. 3, we'll have augmented reality, which is going to give us creativity, you know, within our product displays, a bunch of other things that we get to try.
Then, of course, you know, the integration of loyalty, our service offerings, mobile interaction in the store, digital wallets, many, many more. To say we are excited about this is an understatement. We believe this is gonna be a huge game changer for us. As I finish up my section, I just wanna put an exclamation point on the future of digital with Signet, and that is absolutely AI-driven personalization. With that, AI-driven personalization and action. We've built the technology and the tools to change the face of our business forever, but data-driven action is going to be our clear differentiator. With investments that we've made in our customer data platform, coupled with the digital changes, we're gonna start pushing automated content to both our sites as well as our in-store consultants.
Our modular UI, the web rebuild that we're doing, as well as connected commerce maturity, is then gonna move us from a website for many to a very dynamic, personalized experience curated just for you. We charted a course that's responsive to the market, it's technically advanced, and it really understands customer expectations. This is the recipe for our lifetime value change. Now my colleague Jamie Singleton is gonna share more about our personalization transformation as we connect data, tools, and marketing to thread connected commerce through everything we do. Thank you for your time today. Thank you for being a part of this journey. Excited about what is next.
Thank you, Rebecca. That's exciting. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Jamie Singleton. I'm Signet's Group President and Chief Consumer Officer. I'm delighted to be here with you all. We've talked this morning about winning in our big businesses, accelerating accessible luxury, growing services, and leveraging digital to create a seamless, unified retail experience for our customers. I wanna talk now about how our data analytics and our consumer insights capability is driving Signet's results and creating significant scaled competitive advantage. We like to think about consumer insights as our secret weapon. It's really the heartbeat of our capabilities. Our scale and our data allow us to gather more insights about customers than other specialty jewelers. I believe that we know more about our customers than most companies in retail.
As Jenna said earlier, our data and digital have been drivers of our transformation from the very beginning of our journey. We've made significant investments in technology, in talent, in strategic acquisitions that have all dramatically accelerated the capabilities that we have today. When we began this transformation, we had multiple systems capturing customer data. As a company of acquisitions, we saw a need to combine it into one integrated system. We also were storing data on multiple platforms, often on a banner basis with no enterprise view or scale. As a result of that, we had a limited pool of data and little ability to leverage it across our business. When I took the job as Chief Marketing Officer, it became clear that we had some important opportunities to capitalize on.
We invested very quickly in an analytics team to clean up the data that we had, to migrate customer data for our biggest banners onto one platform, and then begin building the tools and skills to mine and maximize the data so that we could see the growth opportunities. We did this while also ensuring we were leveraging every customer touch point to capture more data and use it to serve customers in increasingly personalized ways. We now have a single view of our customers across banners, stores, websites, SMS, and email for all of our biggest banners. We're developing and leveraging with our partners machine learning and AI capabilities that enable us to track behavior, identify patterns, predict next purchases, and spot the signals that tell us when and why it's the perfect time to connect with our customers.
Then we generate creative that helps us serve existing customers and acquire new ones with the right message to the right person at the right time, every time. These capabilities influence our media spend. They've reduced our reliance on mass advertising, and they're driving more personalized communication that leads to strong lifetime relationships with our customers. I like to think about this as the industry's largest book of business. For generations, the jewelry industry has relied on individual salespeople keeping their own book. The data in it was only as good as the salesperson who entered it, and accessibility to it was quite limited, perhaps to a team or maybe just to that one individual. At Signet, we've built an enterprise-wide book of business that we manage as a strategic and systemic asset.
Our database is now 55 million customers strong, including 23 million new customers that we've attracted in the last 3 years. We can see how customers move from banner to banner, from stores to online, and then back again. We can see if a customer is looking at a product at Kay, for example, but if they don't convert, it prompts us on-site or through a consultant to share with them an even more appealing product or maybe another banner within Signet's portfolio. Everything we do is becoming increasingly integrated. From our consumer-facing touchpoints to the clienteling data in a consultant's hands, to the automated use case campaigns triggered by customer signals to our supply chain and our fulfillment systems.
We believe that the scale and sophistication of our data, our technology and analytics is beyond what any independent can build, and it's an increasingly important driver of share growth, particularly in an industry that's as fragmented as jewelry. There are approximately 16,000 independents, the vast majority of whom are small businesses without the scale to do what we do. This further amplifies the value that our capabilities create. It's not just the data and technology. Another differentiator for us is the nature of our customer relationships. You know, our customers come to us at the most important moments of their lives, times of love and celebration, when they want to create lasting memories, and they engage more deeply with us as a result. Traditional retail just doesn't evoke the same response.
People aren't going to share as much about themselves when they're looking for a pair of shoes or jeans. They share much more with us about their relationships, about their aspirations, even their anxieties about making a financially and emotionally significant purchase. We capture those insights. We tap into them to innovate and provide education, services, and support to our customers. Beyond the data itself, we've developed a mix of proprietary models for using it and for maximizing its value. First is the way that we leverage market assessments, which we do on a continuous basis. We assess the markets in which we compete to understand our relative positioning and how it's evolving on a dynamic basis. We can anticipate and we can respond to competition. We do this across jewelry and also by segment.
We focus not just on how we're positioned overall, but on how we're positioned within price segments: accessible luxury, fine, mid-fine, and value. We keep close track of the macroeconomy and key trends that impact our business. Consumer confidence, inflation, strength of the service economy, purchase incident, brand health, more. We track it all. For example, I'll give you an interesting stat here. We used analytic models in part that combined our insights into dating headwinds from COVID and the impact of macro factors to assess our sales risk and opportunities for the year, which I'll talk a little more about shortly. We're relentlessly focused on how we're doing in customer journeys. Gifting, especially milestone gifting, is a really good example.
We know that customers spend approximately $100 billion on gifts of $100 or more each year, and an estimated $17 billion is spent by jewelry gifters. This is across all gifts of $100 or more. Jewelry is near the top for total spend. We compete with categories such as personal tech, products, travel, other experiences. Our Signet banners combined represent nearly 20% of these jewelry purchases across the categories. This is commensurate with the emotional relevance of the jewelry category and the important roles our banners play in people's lives. We have plenty of room, as you can see, to keep growing. We also know from our research that birthday and anniversaries are by far the occasions with the highest spend, and 61% of milestone gifts are purchased within a week of being gifted.
This tells us that driving traffic in store and online within the same week that we learn someone is shopping for a gift is a key opportunity. We also know that product customization is highest for milestone gifts, particularly among Gen Z and millennials. Here too, our data shapes the customer experience, and it drives both assortment and services. We have equally interesting and clear insights about self-purchase and holiday gifting. We understand, for example, that different types of consumers shop during different time frames during the holiday season. We know that early holiday shoppers are most likely to seek deals. They're more likely to shop for gold and to buy from multiple people. While later shoppers are predominantly men, they're shopping for their one significant other, and they're more interested in diamond or fashion, and they're less driven by discounts.
Knowing all of this allows us to time our features, our marketing, promotional plans, and more. Every decision that we make, every decision is driven by our customers. Dynamic testing is yet another capability that sets us apart. I'm excited to tell you about it today. We've developed a proprietary pre-testing methodology that evaluates the likely success or failure of a new product idea before they're put into store test. We combine product concepts, price points, visualization, and storytelling to make demand and revenue predictions from multiple concepts in parallel with one another. This gives us richer, faster, and more accurate data and insights than we've ever had before. Along with this capability, we have significantly improved our speed to market. For example, in Kay, we've gone from 30% of new launches meeting volume forecast or exceeding their expected volume forecast to 60%.
We've doubled the performance in just three years. The way we're transforming our approach to marketing through data is also a great example. We're focused on four significant changes. First, we're reflecting the mindset of the modern customer by adopting a contemporary approach across our portfolio, evaluating the look, feel, and inclusivity of every Signet banner. Second, over the past four years, we've nearly doubled the percentage of our ad spend going to digital and targeted marketing. Third, we're moving beyond monolithic messaging to highly personalized communication to distinct customer groups. Fourth, we're evolving from an episodic advertising approach around key holidays to an always-on, data-driven approach that leverages our scale, accelerates our speed to market, and significantly increases conversion rates, average transaction values, and other drivers of our growth.
We believe we can generate nearly half a billion dollars in revenue growth by fiscal 2027 as we continue to improve the effectiveness and the efficiency of our marketing efforts. We're going after this growth in five ways. First, we're providing advanced clienteling tools to give jewelry consultants insights to act on in real time. Second, we're expanding what we think of as a content supply chain to deliver personalized and culturally relevant content at scale. This is important and such a shared growth driver because independents in particular will struggle to communicate at scale with this level of personalization. Third, we're fueling our media placements with first-party data and innovation partners like Meta, Google, Pinterest, and others. Fourth, we're delivering seamless data-driven personalization across the Signet customer journey. We're connecting experiences across websites, SMS, email, and in store.
Last, we're growing our own first-party data pool through our loyalty program and other touchpoints. This too is particularly important because as privacy laws continue to evolve, brands that own their own data and have a direct relationship with their customers will win. The early indications from our personalization efforts are driving increases in conversion and average transaction value. In terms of new customer acquisition, we're leveraging first-party data to drive effectiveness and media efficiency by personalizing our messages and our placements. We're also leveraging our unified retail footprint by placing greater emphasis on AI-driven local inventory advertising. In this way, we're able to not only recommend the right product to a customer, but also direct them to a nearby store where that product is in stock and available.
When we did this during the post-shipping window at Christmas, we saw a 34% increase in return on ad spend. While we're pleased with these early results, we're learning as well. We're learning as we go. We're taking a fail fast and learn fast approach to all of this work, and it's guiding our investment strategy, and it's enabling us to make more informed, faster choices than we ever have before. I hope this gives you a clearer understanding of the analytics and the insight capability we're building and where we're leveraging it across the business. What I really want to ensure you understand is how we do it. There's no better way to illustrate our capability than how we've been able to anticipate the engagement gap created by COVID and prepare as that gap begins to close. We've done this with data-driven confidence.
In other words, how do we know that what we know is right at a level that we can invest behind and act upon? We know a lot about engagement, brides, bridal parties, and all the milestone moments that follow a wedding over the course of a lifetime. I'm confident we know more about brides, grooms, significant others, and relationship milestones than anyone else in the industry or in retail generally. This level of insight is never more valuable than at times when patterns seem to be changing because we're able to understand what is changing, what's not changing, why? We're able to do it faster and more accurately than others in the industry. When the COVID lockdowns began, some couples rushed to get engaged, but a lot of early relationships faded, and there was a dramatic decline in dating.
This led to the engagement gap that we're still seeing today. While dating was delayed, people were eager to re-resume relationships, and dating resumed in a big way as soon as people could begin getting back out. That was a trigger for us because we have so much insight into a couple's journey from meeting to dating, to getting engaged, and then getting married. We also draw on a broad range of public data. We use Google search, social media, industry partners, including banking, travel, real estate, and even pet adoption. We also have completed multiple proprietary quantitative research studies and analysis on couples. We use this massive amount of data to understand behavioral triggers that indicate relationships are progressing toward engagement. This is really interesting. In one study that we did, we followed 2,000 couples through different phases of their relationships.
We learned that from this research that there are four major relationship stages. First, there's just initial dating. Couples have multiple dates, but it's still early in the relationship. Second, exclusivity. That's the next stage, and here things are getting more serious in the second stage. By this time, they know each other very well, and they've moved to an exclusive relationship. Third, they're moving to committed. This is a big transition stage, and at this point, they're totally committed to one another, and they think they could be long-term partners. Then comes engagement. Roughly 3 and a quarter years after they begin dating, on average, they get engaged. An entirely new journey begins that goes from engagement to wedding, and there are more stages and more milestone moments that we deeply understand there as well. We've also learned something fascinating.
There are 45 milestones through a couple's journey to engagement. They all matter. They're all important. What our research has shown us is that once couples experience at least 27 of these milestones, it becomes highly likely that they'll move to engagement. Let me tell you a little bit more. In addition, there are certain predictors that are stronger from moving from one phase of a relationship to another. Sometimes it's not just the one trigger by itself, it's triggers in combination. Some are important in combination with others. For example, moving in together is a strong predictor of engagement. If a couple meets the parents of their partner, they combine their finances, and they say, "I love you," in a visible space such as a social media post, then that combination is a big, big predictor of engagement.
As people began getting back out after the lockdowns, we monitored the return of dating, and we began looking for all these various triggers that we'd identified. With the precision of our dynamic customer data, we've been able to predict with a lot of confidence when the engagement headwind is likely to turn into an engagement tailwind and resume this category's long-standing pattern of growth of 2% to 3% a year. This is driven by couples' belief in the importance of dating and relationships. Dating, in fact, is up 8% to pre-COVID. We don't see this long-term behavior going away at all. What's happened over the past couple of years is what we anticipated, and it's really what we planned for. Engagement jewelry sales were lackluster in fiscal 23, and we expect them to remain so for the balance of fiscal 24.
We're confident in the turn that's coming. We're equally confident that engagements will continue to be a headwind for the majority of the year, all of which is incorporated into our plans and more importantly, into our strategy for the year. As couples' relationships are progressing, we're ready. We have a more choiceful assortment of inventory, more personalized marketing, and deeper relationship building skills driven by our first-party data, our incredible jewelry consultants, and the technology capabilities that we've built over these past few years, and we're going to continue building them. What I want most to ensure you of is that you see the competitive advantage that our insights and analytics create. We're not just responding to macro trends or relying on our intuition.
We're making very highly informed, data-driven decisions at a speed and a scale that no one else in the industry can match. We're getting better at this year by year. We're extending our competitive advantage insight by insight. On that note, I'll turn it over to Joan for perspective on our real estate strategy and fuel for growth. Joan.
Thanks, Jamie. Creating a seamless banner experience requires us to integrate our physical fleet with enhanced digital experiences that express each banner's unique value proposition. To achieve this, our real estate strategy is also informed by consumer data analytics and market analysis to ensure we are investing in top markets with the right banners at the right locations while addressing the diverse consumer populations in each area. Our strategy is holistic. It begins with investments in our top markets and stores, which has included more than $335 million in capital over the past five years. We've used this investment to optimize and refresh our fleet with approximately 22% more stores meeting our BVP standards. Approximately 75% of our projects include spend that addresses our sustainability initiatives.
To ensure that the productivity of our fleet, we assess underperforming stores on an ongoing basis and have closed or repositioned more than 1,000 stores over the past 5 years. Notably, sales per square foot has improved nearly 50% over the same timeframe. The key to our real estate decision-making is to optimize our physical fleet across all banners in store and online. We have flexibility within our portfolio to shape our fleet. On a near-term basis with average remaining lease terms of approximately 2 and a half years. This means we have more than 800 stores up for renewal each year, which enables us to evaluate market opportunity of these stores on an ongoing basis. At the fleet level, we take a top market approach and assess location and demand for each banner to maximize market share, market by market across all banners.
At the store level, consumer insights and digital capabilities allow us to target markets with hyperlocal precision block by block. This includes overall demand, competition, demographics, multicultural assessment, and match-to-match banner affinities. This determines precisely where we want to be for maximum growth. Houston is an example of a top market in which we have a healthy presence of stores, and it includes all of our North American banners. We still have significant share growth opportunity as we identify new location possibilities at a micro level. At the same time, we have stores there that are not performing at their location potential, and we address this with assortment, capital investment, marketing effectiveness, and data-driven labor coverage. Our optimization goal is to transition our fleet to support all channels and align with changing customer shopping patterns.
Over the past five years, we have moved a substantial part of our fleet from traditional malls to off-mall locations while concentrating more than 80% of our North America stores in mall presence in A and B grade malls. 80% of our North American in malls are in A and B malls. We do maintain a presence in C malls, our stores in these locations generally have a smaller footprint and are highly unproductive. This leaves us with 40% in our off-mall locations. Our off-mall strategy has attractive economics and provides an incremental 260 basis points of store contribution when compared to in-mall locations. This is driven by lower occupancy costs and labor scheduling flexibility for each location, which improves labor productivity.
Also notable, the revenue growth for off-mall locations was nearly 10 points higher than in-mall locations over the past three years as we've transitioned from declining malls. We also leverage off-mall locations in lower profile markets where demand exists but without quality mall locations nearby. We currently have 114 Kay locations in markets like these that we refer to as our hometown strategy. We believe we have new store opportunities, particularly within Diamonds Direct and the potential for further expansion of the Kay modular concept. In a similar way, we direct freshness of fleet investments to ensure our top markets and top stores uniquely and consistently represent our banners. Our investments range from a full remodel, which includes the full expression of the latest banner format, to a cosmetic enhancement, to cosmetic upgrades in key markets that bring more stores up to brand standards.
Before I close on real estate, I want to highlight one last component of our real estate strategy. Our stores play an important role in our ability to achieve Signet's sustainability goals. We have made progress with our Project Illuminate initiative to target roughly 40% in energy reduction with full store LED installs. We're doing the same with HVAC efficiency, targeting about a 20% energy reduction as a result of newer energy-efficient units. This will continue to be a focus in fiscal 2024 and beyond. The key point I want to leave you with here is that our physical fleet is an integral part of our connected commerce experience.
Looking forward, we believe that our real estate strategy has the potential to contribute more than $200 million in incremental revenue, primarily in our accessible luxury banners and improve profitability by the continued optimization of our fleet. With that, let's turn to how we're fueling our growth. Our operating model is a flywheel. The more share our banners gain and the more scale we develop, the stronger our results, which enables consistent growth and cash generation that we invest to extend our competitive advantages and to return cash to shareholders. This may seem intuitive, but in retail, there may be a tendency to get caught up in short-term decision-making. Because of our organizational discipline, we are consistently balancing our long-term vision with our commitment to deliver to shareholders. The results of our flywheel have been speaking for themselves.
Over the last five and a half years, we have been on a journey to improve our operating performance and build a healthy balance sheet. As we look forward, the foundation we've built gives us the ability to fuel further investment and innovate with new business models. We've implemented significant structural changes in our business that have driven 884 basis points of margin improvement since we began our transformation. We've reinvested 200 basis points of savings back into our strategic priorities. I'd like to re-emphasize that these changes are structural. They are built to endure through changing economic environments. We've implemented new capabilities, changed our way of doing business, and removed costly infrastructure to drive efficiency. Now as a result, we are poised to deliver a sustainable annual double-digit non-GAAP operating margin. Now let's look more closely at the changes we've made.
The first step we took was to restructure financial services. We fully outsourced credit to third-party service providers, eliminating consumer credit risk from our balance sheet and minimizing our exposure to the impact of macro factors on consumers. We estimate a favorable 140 basis point benefit, which equates to roughly $100 million in savings in FY23. Second, with the investment in analytics, we have unlocked the ability to assess fleet productivity with much greater precision. We've eliminated roughly $130 million in occupancy costs through store closings, excluding our acquisitions. This has created 200 basis points of margin expansion. We are also achieving higher productivity on a smaller physical footprint and an expanded digital presence, which has also created an additional 150 basis points of occupancy leverage.
Third, we leverage analytics to determine store labor scheduling by hour by consultant. We removed roughly $60 million in store labor costs by using and refining this capability. This is net of the important investments we have made in field compensation, benefits, and training. Lastly, through ongoing cost discipline driven by our commitment to take out costs our customers don't care about, we have generated nearly $600 million in savings, 65% of which is SG&A and 35% was in gross margin. This has enabled us to reinvest in critical capabilities, including marketing, digital, data, and analytics to drive revenue growth. We're not letting up. We see continuing opportunities to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and expand gross margin.
The first opportunity is more sophisticated strategic revenue management capabilities, which leverage AI and analytics to create new pricing models down to the item level and includes more advanced forecasting tools. We are also implementing advanced assortment planning and demand forecasting with predictive models to inform which merchandise to buy and how much. This is complemented by SKU rationalization initiatives to improve inventory efficiency and minimize potential cannibalization. Within supply chain, next generation flexible fulfillment, store level allocation, and replenishment are the next priorities. These initiatives are designed to have the right assortment in the right locations, online and in store, minimizing clearance inventory. It also partially mitigates the cost of reverse logistics by ensuring our inventory is in the right place the first time. Additionally, the integration of Blue Nile is expected to deliver significant cost synergies.
For example, we are moving Blue Nile's website onto a common platform with James Allen. This is a top synergy priority and is expected to be completed early in the third quarter. When this work is completed, we will be able to eliminate duplicative costs and unnecessary costs. We also see opportunities to expand merchandise margin by leveraging our scale across these banners. We've also developed a cost savings mindset across the entire company. We are constantly looking for ways to eliminate costs our customers don't care about, that we can reinvest in our business. Now I'd like to turn to sourcing. Our goal in sourcing is to leverage our scale to drive margin gain. As the jewelry industry leader, we have strategic relationships with our vendors. This enables us to create greater transparency in product sourcing and to increase vertical integration within Signet.
We're doing this in several ways. First, we want to ensure that we are first to market with the right product at the right quality and at the right cost, and that we have just-in-time flexibility within our core products. This is enabled by our improved forecasting at the item level and is essential for us to drive further inventory productivity. Second, our strategic partnerships and exclusive licensing agreements are real innovation differentiators for us. They enable us to create high quality, distinctive products that our customers love and can afford, and that we can bring to market ahead of competition. The strong collaboration between our merchandising team and the product design teams within our vendor network sets us apart. Our efforts here are also significant contributions to the company's sustainability goals, both in terms of environmental sustainability and responsible sourcing. Let's go deeper into costs.
We've implemented a leading sourcing system to maximize the value of our vendor network. This system allows us to benchmark standardized component costs and create transparency in cost negotiations across our network. By linking this new sourcing system with our internal vendor analytics tool, we are able to match our product demand and supply needs with the right vendors across all of our banners for best performance in quality, service, and in cost. Turning to vertical integration, which is a critical advantage for Signet as we leverage our scale. For example, we are a Sightholder with De Beers. As a Sightholder, we have access to rough diamonds, which we convert into high quality certified grade diamonds through our own state-of-the-art diamond plotting, cutting, and polishing capabilities in Botswana.
This enables us to eliminate layers in the supply chain and reduce costs, the combination of which is an important competitive advantage. Additionally, through the combination of the R2Net and Blue Nile diamond marketplaces, we have visibility into a significant number of the world's certified diamonds, which includes full characteristics and costs. Having this visibility is an important advantage because it gives us real-time understanding of pricing and market dynamics. The funding created by all of these initiatives that I've outlined will be partially reinvested, consistent with our capital priorities to improve our capabilities and widen the moat of competitive advantages around our business that our team has taken you through today. Our capital priorities remain consistent. Our fundamental strategic priority is to invest in the business, including acquisitions, to accelerate competitive capabilities and strategic growth plans.
Critical investments, in summary, include activating our customer data platform, investing in real estate to enable the growth of our accessible luxury banner, advancing the level of sophistication in our supply chain, and expanding services. Our enabling priority is to maintain debt leverage of less than 2.75 times EBITDA, which is critical to the health of our balance sheet. Many of you have asked questions about our debt profile. Our cap structure includes a $1.5 billion ABL facility that matures in July 2026 and provides a carve-out for the calendar 2024 maturities of our preferred debt and senior notes. There's no springing maturity. The preferred debt, which matures in November 2024, translates to 8.1 million shares, which are included in our diluted share count and EPS calculation.
Our long-term commitment is to return cash to shareholders, which we do primarily through share repurchases and dividends. We currently have $765 million of share authorization remaining, including repurchases of stock in the first quarter of approximately $35 million to date. It's important to note that our EPS goals exclude further share repurchases other than repurchases made to offset the dilution of share-based compensation. With respect to dividends, we've delivered 13% dividend growth on average since our reinstatement of the common dividend in fiscal 2022. Throughout today's presentations, we have demonstrated that we have a clear path to our midterm goals. The recovery of bridal is expected to deliver up to $600 million in growth over the next several years.
Accessible luxury banners, including our digital banners, are expected to deliver over $1 billion in growth, supported by bridal and real estate expansion. Our services expansion is expected to grow up to $500 million with nearly 50% of that growth coming from repair business. Personalized marketing investments are expected to deliver another $450 million across banners as we achieve and activate our customer data platform. Over the last 3 and 5 years, we have outperformed both the XRT and the S&P 500. We have built a strong balance sheet, liquidity position, and demonstrated our ability to deliver an annual double-digit non-GAAP operating margin. It is our confidence in what we can deliver, underpinned by the reality of what we have delivered, that convinces us that our stock is undervalued.
We hope that you come away with that same conviction today. Signet is a transformed company. We're a differentiated retailer with scaled competitive advantages in an attractive and fragmented market, driving consistent shareholder returns. We're confident we have what it takes to achieve our goals and grow sustainably over the long term, all driven by our company's strong sense of purpose, and culture of innovation and agility. On that note, Jen and I are happy to take your questions. Jill will wrap us up with a few concluding remarks. Stay up here?
Yes. All right. Well, we're happy to take any questions.
Hi there. Oliver Chen, TD Cowen. Thank you very much. As we look ahead to the engagement trends, how would you interplay the revenue growth relative to engagement and what may happen? Also, as we think about the current environment, would love your thoughts on traffic and promotions and how they may intersect with your data-driven strategies ahead. Finally, the loyalty program is a big opportunity. What do you see happening there? How will you utilize it? Are you balancing between existing, you know, versus new customers? How might this impact the model? Thank you.
Sure. We're very confident in the data that we have that indicated in advance of it happening, that engagements would go through a trough period. That trough actually happens this fall. If you think about the fact that customers usually date for 3.25 years before they get engaged. 3 years ago, they were in lockdown this summer. 3 years ago, the vaccine became much more broadly available. Customers started dating again. We expect to see engagements begin to pick up in the Q4 and then very strong growth next year. Calendar 2024, calendar 2025. Still some sustained, oversized growth in 2026, back to normal trends in 2027.
All that's based on a combination of publicly available data, Google Search, census trends, you know, a lot of the things that Jamie presented, but also our proprietary research that shows the stages that customers go through. We know that there are customers who are in stage 3 that are coming towards stage 4 that will begin to move into engagement. We feel confident about that. In terms of revenue, that's, you know, over a half a billion dollar opportunity for us, and it's built into our building blocks. Our opportunity to continue to gain share in bridal is also significant. We have about 30% share of that market today. We've invested to get to that share because it's the launching point, as Bill talked about, to lifetime value. That's what leads to gifting and fashion purchases over time.
Oliver, I'll build in your loyalty question here. Loyalty is a huge enabler for us, but it's brand new, and that's exciting because it's a non-comp. We launched Jared's loyalty program just over a year ago. We launched Kay and Zales less than a year ago. We already have 2 million members. We're on our way to a goal of 10 million members in that loyalty program. We know from what Rebecca talked about, that our loyalty customers are significantly more likely to repurchase, to engage with us online as well as in store. We think the loyalty program has significant promise. We've been doing a fair amount of benchmarking with other companies who have big loyalty programs. We believe that we've set ours up in a way.
Mm-hmm.
Jill went into some of the details about gems and how people earn them and what they're good for. This is an area where we're agile, but we're seeing very strong traction with that. Ultimately, it's interesting, but ultimately, we are early in what happens in bridal, right? We get the engagement ring purchase. There's a lot of other things that happen over time, honeymoon planning, dress buying, lots of things like that. We believe we also have the opportunity over time to create partnerships around our loyalty program, which can help to give it further value for our customers. I'll let you take question two.
Okay. Just respect to the traffic and conversion. When we think about our planning process and how we look at a year, the engagement cycle and the planning of what we expect to happen, obviously, you know, impacts the traffic and conversion that we expect throughout the year. What I'd highlight is really important, Oliver, is that fashion, especially in the accessible luxury banner that, you know, Claudia spoke of, is maintained its penetration rate. When we think about traffic conversion, a really big factor for us is thinking about driving up the AUR or the average transaction value by serving the customer with product innovation that, you know, they really are responding to. We are very, you know, pleased to see that fashion is holding penetration.
Hi, Mike Mondazzi with HSBC. Thank you so much for this presentation. I had the pleasure of covering your name, the Signet relationship, for many years and have to commend you, Jenna, on your ability for the analytics. That's a real differentiator over the last few years. I'm wondering, to that end, what you see the analytics on lab-created synthetic diamonds with the consumer and how you're planning for that in the future. Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Thanks very much. I mean, we are now, a data-rich company. I think over time, our access to first-party data and our ability to leverage that is a huge differentiator. Thanks for that. In terms of lab-created, as a retailer, we felt that that was important to offer customers a choice. It's a higher margin choice for us, but we've been very thoughtful about how we've brought it into our mix. We bring in lab-created at a higher average transaction value than we do natural. I'll give you an example. Excuse me.
For customers, if someone comes in and they're looking at a one carat round, for example, in a solitaire engagement ring, and they could get a 1.75 carat round for the same price, we often will show them a two carat or a two and a half carat because the trade-up cost is not that great for a significantly more impactful size of look. Lab-created is not for everyone, but in that case, we've been able then to create a higher average transaction value at a strong margin for ourselves.
Lab-created is still representing a reasonably small portion of our overall diamond sales, and we've really taken the position to make sure that we continue to give customers choice, and we continue to talk to customers who are very interested in it about the magic and rarity of a natural diamond as well.
Thank you. Mauricio Serna from UBS. Just wanted to ask on the midterm operating margin guidance of 11%-12%, what are, like, the puts and takes there in terms of like COGS, SG&A? Actually, how does that Blue Nile inflection could play into that? Also, just a question on the capital allocation with the preferred shares. You know, I don't know if, like, the right term would be, like, expiring or something like that in November 2024. Like, what's your thoughts on that? Like, could the company, you know...
Mm-hmm
...buy them out or what is our thought on that? Thank you.
Yeah. So what I'm very excited about in our business is that annual double-digit non-GAAP operating margin is something that we've gotten to already. Now it's just about how do we continue to add on top of that. As Joan talked about in her presentation, a couple of the key things that we believe are there for us are strategic revenue management. That's how we better use data and analytics to plan our pricing and promotion sequencing. It involves a portfolio approach to looking at timing, and we are increasingly using analytics to be able to get that pricing and promotion right across our banners. Our scale gives us the capability to do that. A second one is sourcing.
Joan also talked about our cutting and polishing facility in Botswana, the fact that we're one of only five retail Sightholders of De Beers in the world, only two in the U.S. That gives us a competitive advantage not only in buying rough diamonds and then being able to cut and polish them ourselves or sell those rough diamonds directly to a cutting and polisher, which takes out a layer of margin, a middleman kind of an expense in the supply chain. It also gives us insight to the cost of rough diamonds and how that is moving over time, which we're increasingly using in our component sourcing model. That's not something that we had a few years ago.
You know, just as an example, we now are looking at in every piece of jewelry, we're looking at the cost of the metal, the should cost of the stones, and the should cost of the labor that goes into it. We recently did an assessment, Jamie's team was leading that effort, and we were looking at diamond hoop earrings, and we found that across a number of different vendors for very similar product, one was charging us 4 points higher labor cost than another. Now we immediately then use our scale to go in not only to equalize that and save that 4 margin points, but to go in and negotiate an even lower rate of labor cost with one strategic vendor who's excited about having the volume that a Signet can bring.
That way of being able to look at our costs by component, starting from the mine all the way to the market, is our source and competitive advantage that we're leveraging. As strategic revenue management sourcing, I think are two really big ones that I would call out as ways that we'll look to get that couple of additional margin points. You want to talk about capital allocation?
Yeah. We really haven't shared the split between SG&A and margin. If you think about the initiatives that, you know, we're talking about, many of them influence margin. The ongoing, you know, cost disciplines that will help us fund our investments are also, you know, part of the puts and takes on that, Mauricio. With respect to LGP and our preferred notes, as we've said, they expire in late calendar 2024, and which is next year. We work very closely with LGP. They are a very welcomed support and advisor to us as a with a seat on our board. The terms of that agreement that are specifically in is laid out specifically in the 10-K. However, it matures for payment.
If you pay down, it can as an option, pay down the outstanding balance, which is roughly $650 million, or it can convert into the 8.1 million shares or, you know, if the stock would, you know, grow at 1.75 times the conversion rate, of 80, we also could work with them to convert the shares rather than pay it down. A lot of options there for us, importantly, I felt it was a very important point for you to understand that that is included in our diluted share count currently.
Hi, Will Gaertner from Wells Fargo. How do you guys... With comps, as bridal begins to inflect, how should we think about comps? Or sorry. As engagements begin to inflect, how do we think about comps within bridal? If engagements are up 5%, are bridal comps up 5%? How do we think about that?
Thanks. Can you repeat that?
Sure.
-water duty and-
Yeah. As the bridal category begins to inflect, or, sorry, as the engagement category begins to inflect, how do we think about comps for bridal? Like, if engagements are up 5% or is the bridal category up 5%?
I see. As we would continue to see the bridal category improve through increased engagements, which we have stated that engagements are expected to begin to recover in the 4th quarter, that of this year, that we would continue to see growth over the prior periods with reaching historical levels at, by, the end of calendar 2026, which is for us FY27. We would expect to see continued growth in engagement within our business over time. We've not given guidance on bridal comp, but what we've said is it is influencing our view of guidance, at least for, you know, as we think about it for this year.
Just one more. Can you speak to the margin differential between brick-and-mortar and digital?
It's an interesting question, and I think that it's very different than it has been historically in the mindset of retail, you know, companies, I believe. When you think of digital, technology, connect to commerce and, you know, physical fleet, they all interplay with each other. It's a unified experience, retail experience. Our initiatives related to inventory fulfillment and flex fulfillment gives our customer, we call our stores and our DC our, you know, nationwide vault. We can pull inventory from any location. That really helps us, you know, as we think about our margin and our inventory turns. It's an important asset to us to continue to develop those capabilities.
As a result, we don't see an appreciable difference because we use e-com as a way to rebalance our inventory across the fleet.
Used to be that it was a clearance vehicle. Now it's the we were looking at the inventory in our stores, the clearance inventory. We've said that our clearance inventory is down like 13%, 13 points, pardon me, over the last five years. That helps us balance margins and really expand our margins as we have over time.
Thank you.
I... Oh.
Oh.
Quick question. The on the data that you're looking at for projecting increases in engagements, you've got this 3.25 average that's historic. I'm just thinking if in the post-pandemic environment, people lost a few years. Are you seeing any data within those four stages which suggest there might be an acceleration in the average period from beginning dating to engagement?
That's factored into the assessment. It's why it's not a huge spike all at once, and we see it actually happening across a several-year period. All of our indications, like, you know, Jamie showed the chart on dating. Dating is up 8% versus pre-COVID levels. All the signals that we're seeing indicate that people are back to dating. They'll be back to getting engaged. They'll be back to getting married. All of our data indicates that people get engaged with a diamond engagement ring at the same rate their parents did. They're, you know, getting married at the same rate their parents did. We see that it may extend over that couple of years as opposed to one big spike. Beyond that, we think then after that, it normalizes.
I'll tell you one other factor that's an interesting one is, and, I think Bill had it in his presentation. 40% of engagements going forward are multicultural or LGBTQ plus. Multicultural customers, Hispanic customers in particular, are highly traditional in their engagement trends. Another factor that's helping that average stay the same is the increasing percentage of Hispanic engagements that we would expect, which tend to happen on that very routine kind of schedule. Sure.
Hi, Jim Sanderson from Northcoast Research. Just wanted to drill down a little bit more on some of the growth initiatives you've outlined. How do we look at the CapEx that's gonna be necessary to grow and how your store fleet is going to change? Should we start seeing an increase in square footage? Is there gonna be kind of a rebalancing, more focused, optimized, just, what the implications are for free cash flow?
Thanks for the question, Jim. With respect to real estate square footage, we've talked about accessible luxury banners, which tend to be a larger square footage store, right? We continue to optimize our fleet with closing stores that are underperforming or repositioning. Basically, there's an ebb and flow there, but we would really have to grow our number of new stores substantially to see square footage growth. It'll be very measured, but when we talk about the pace of accelerating the doubling the pace of Diamonds Direct, as an example, that, you know, it's taking, you know, 6-9 stores into account. We'd have to see something much more significant than that to really elevate our square footage.
No, no real impact.
Ebbs and flows.
Ebbs and flows.
Right.
With respect to capital investment, we will, you know, continue to balance that within our capital model or our capital allocation priorities against these initiatives, and so it'll be very measured, based on the return. We haven't truly given guidance related to the amount of capital investment, but it will be in line with our priorities and will be funded through our savings.
Thank you.
Thanks. Hi, Oliver Chen, TD Cowen. At the Jared banner, revitalization of the store experience was a key opportunity. Could you elaborate on what needs to happen there and the opportunity? Then attitudinal data was very interesting and comprehensive. When we think about attitudinal data, which bucket do you see the most opportunity in in terms of where you see gaps in Signet relative to the opportunity? Thank you.
I'm very excited about our Jared strategy, particularly as a combination of the entire accessible luxury portfolio, as Claudia talked about. We've been tearing up Jared already over the last several years, she's taking that even to the next level. One of her slides showed that 60% of Jared sales are now at price points over $2,000, with 10% of that over $10,000. I mean, we're, you know, anecdotally seeing sales of over $100,000 in Jared. We had a great customer example recently, you know, who had been to a luxury retail competitor, didn't have a great experience, came to Jared, and within an hour and a half, you know, fell in love with the team and bought a $25,000 special milestone gift.
Jared is really more and more, I think our Claudia called it our entry point into accessible luxury because we're offering a breadth of price points, but we're able to trade people up through the ranks. It has traditionally been focused largely on bridal. We're broadening that more into gifting and in the self-purchase. We're bringing more proprietary brands. We'll be on a trip in Italy in the next week and a half, really negotiating some of that. Some of the continued styles that we're seeing are a significant elevation versus what we've had in Jared before. Think of Jared as really that full-service jewelry retailer. You walk into the store, you have a broad choice of opportunity. You see the jewelers there, so you know that custom is a capability and an expertise of Jared.
I think a big opportunity to continue to differentiate. In terms of the attitudinal segmentation, I love where the banner portfolio now sits in the sense that we broadly cover it. If you'd asked me, 2 years ago, I'd have said savvy affluence, who typically tend to be a higher price purchaser, typically tend to be a bit more rational. They look for brands, they look for certified diamonds. I'd have said we have a hole in our portfolio there. We're not really satisfying that customer. With the acquisitions of Diamonds Direct and Blue Nile, we filled that in. We still have tremendous opportunity to grow in that segment. It's, we're very new at it, but as Blue Nile comes more online, we'll have that exclusive digital experience there.
I think, you know, Blue Nile has traditionally been one of the most shopped websites to understand pricing. That bit of rational customer across any of those attitudinal segments has often gone to Blue Nile and trusted them for that. I think that continues to be, you know, a big opportunity for us. Generous sentimentalist is the biggest. That's where Kay, you know, largely sits. Signet, you know, we Kay is very important. We live and breathe on that one.
Thanks. Just a quick follow-up. I guess just confirming that, you know, there's no changes to the guidance for fiscal year 2024 so far? The other thing, what are your thoughts about like the appropriate level of cash in the balance sheet, just given like, I think it's over $1 billion. I mean, given if these plan plays out, you're gonna be generating tremendous amount of cash flow. Just wanting to understand what's a good appropriate level for that.
Mm-hmm.
Thanks.
No change to the guidance for the quarter or the fiscal year. Coming into this meeting, we close our quarter within a couple of weeks, so, you know, we'll be reporting more on that later. At this point, we haven't guided any change versus what we said on the, you know, fourth quarter call before. In terms of cash on hand, Jen, I'll let you speak to, you know, a particular amount. What I would say is that we love, we love the cash generation potential of this business. I mentioned in my remarks that we've generated on average every year of our transformation, $800 million in free cash flow.
That's why we've been able to return $1.4 billion to shareholders, pay down debt, make capital investments, and buy 2 strategic acquisitions in cash. We like that ongoing cash flow potential. We don't see another big M&A on the horizon right now, potentially smaller complementary efforts. We're busy integrating Blue Nile and doing a great job of that, a bit ahead of pace. We wanna make sure we keep our focus there. We've talked about, you know, capital allocation priorities.
Mm-hmm.
We've said we plan to spend, you know, about $200 million in capital this year, about half in real estate, about half in this continued customer data platform, digital, you know, data capabilities that we have. We have quite a bit of share buyback authorization left.
I mean, on balance, the cash position that we like to end the year with that serves us well in the coming year is roughly $800 million. We like to end the year there because as we move through the rest of the year, we have a floor of cash that we like to hold at $250 million-$300 million. What that does is gives us the room to replenish our inventory after holiday and, you know, address the capital investments and so forth that we have, you know, we talk about and believe that that's what then continues the flywheel to continue our growth.
I would also, just remind you that in this, year, this, quarter, we will be, paying the $190 million of the legal settlement as you think about, that for the coming year, which we've, you know, shared before.
Mm-hmm.
Hi, Josh Herrity from Telsey Advisory Group. I was curious on inventory turns. You've done a great job of improving turns with the merchandising work you've done over the past several years, I think kinda high 1s to low 2s. obviously an inherently sort of lower turning business, but I was just wondering if there's still more opportunity, both from a margin and working capital perspective to drive improvement there as you continue to rationalize the store fleet, expand your digital capabilities. Are there opportunities for more centralized either inventory distribution or maybe even virtual inventory as you improve your supply chain capabilities and, you know, have closer vendor relationships?
Yeah. Thanks, Josh. What I spoke about in my remarks with respect to initiatives for this year, one is strategic revenue management, which, you know, helps drive margin. The second was encompassed within that was SKU rationalization, which is complementary to the, you know, to the strategic revenue management. What that does for us is shortens the tail or the long tail of inventory that has a longer life cycle. What we work towards and continue to do is take marks earlier, take them in their leaner marks, and that again helps us improve margin, but also helps us to turn our inventories faster, to bring in, and allows us to make room for new receipts.
It's 2 fold, clearance as well as take the mark earlier so you can bring in new receipts. The life cycle management is something that we continue to evolve. The fulfillment activities and the supply chain activities are what we spoke about was, you know, next gen. It's more sophistication using AI and technology to deliver the or send stores or store allocation to the right store at the right time with the right level of inventory. We continue to refine that precision, and we see that as continued inventory efficiency for us. It's important. Vertical integration is another way that, you know, we can continue to leverage our supply base of diamonds and use that to source finished product, which also enables us to turn inventory faster.
All right. Great. Thanks for so many great questions. Thank you so much for the honor of giving us your time today. We really appreciate it. Many of you have been following our story, and we enjoyed sharing it with you in more detail and those who are new to it, with you as well. I hope we convinced you today that Signet is a transformed company, that we have the right strategies, the right team, and the competitive advantages to deliver very strong results now and in the years ahead. We invite you to spend some additional time viewing some videos that we've put together. One is on our purpose in ESG, including our leadership and responsible sourcing. We've one on product innovation that's interesting, one on banner differentiation.
Really, you know, 4 great videos here, and we hope you'll stay and enjoy a delicious lunch with us. Thank you very much.
Thank you.