Proving that there’s a serious side to the party business, Party City ceo James Harrison and cfo Dan Sullivan recently presented at the Morgan Stanley Global Consumer & Retail Brokers Conference.
The meeting, which took place on Tuesday 14 November, saw the pair talking candidly with analyst Simeon Gutman, about the numbers behind the successful retail business.
In his initial introduction, Simeon quickly identified that while party stores are the face of the business, the real hub of the business is in fact a wholesale manufacturing operation.
He asked James to describe Party City’s long-term strategy for both retail and wholesale and outline how that fits into the evolving retail landscape.
“I think if we look at our business…. we see tremendous opportunities on both sides of the equation,” James said. “We know that the consumer wants to shop in our stores for product. This past Halloween several surveys clearly indicated that the consumer wants to shop in store for the Halloween products. They use the web for inspiration.”
Breaking it down even further, James gave a little more insight into the consumer breakdown. “Some 65% to 70% want to shop at stores, 30% want to use the web for inspiration, and a little over 20% this past Halloween tended to buy their party goods online,” he said. “The good news for us is PartyCity.com is the largest online party supplier (US). So we’ve got that covered as well.”
James also went on to talk about the importance of implementing instore initiatives to improve customer engagement and outlined the retailer’s aims for next year. Plans have already been put in place to acquire 23 more franchisees in early 2018, with more to follow over the next 12 months.
The interview later revealed that the international side of the Party City consumer products business is worth roughly $250million and is continuing to grow.
The manufacturing side of the business was a key focus of much of the interview, with the broadened vertical strategy offering Party City – which operates nine separate manufacturing operations – a whole host of new opportunities for growth.
You can read the full interview here.
