Paul Fireman Quotes on Business & Commerce (3 Quotes)

The retail slowdown has continued in the first half of 1998 and has resulted in higher retail cancellations and returns, ... We believe that in the current environment many retailers are being more conservative in their future purchases, leaving more open-to-buy dollars available for at-once business. This situation, in combination with the unusually low at-once business in last year's second half, creates the potential for our performance to be better than our backlog trend indicates.

The industry is definitely going through some difficult times, ... We have been making the necessary adjustments to address the current business climate and we are prepared to do what is necessary to position the company to return to greater profitability in the future.

The overall industry outlook is not improving in the short term, and the economic conditions in Asia Pacific and Latin America continue to negatively impact our business, ... The domestic market is suffering from heavy promotions at retail, which is affecting our performance. And the well publicized conditions in Japan and Korea, our two largest markets in the Far East, has caused reported sales to decline approximately 50 percent when compared to last year.