E-commerce accounts for 81% of Celebrate Express Q1 sales

The web continues to dominate sales for Celebrate Express Inc. The online and catalog retailer of family oriented card and party products reports first quarter fiscal 2008 online sales of $14.3 million. Web sales climbed to 81% of overall FY 2008 Q1 sales, which totaled $17.6 million, from 73% in Q1 2007.

Net sales were off 12% compared with $19.9 million in the same quarter last year. Despite the sales decline, CEO Kevin Green is optimistic about the current fiscal year. “Our Costume Express brand revenue increased 17% from the prior year as we looked to capture sales earlier in the season, before traditional retailers are carrying Halloween products. We also completed the transition of our entire product offering to our consolidated Celebrate Express portal web site to enhance our efforts to make Celebrate Express the source for a wide variety of family celebration needs,” he says. Costume Express sales promotions were pushed out to August this year.

Celebrate Express, No. 163 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, counted approximately 119,000 new customers in the first quarter of FY 2008, ended August 31, 2007. That brought its total customer database to 3.5 million, up 19% year-over-year.

Net sales per order were $78.40 in first quarter of 2008, compared with $80.80 in the same quarter last year. Revenue from repeat customers represented approximately 45% of revenue during the first quarter of fiscal 2008, consistent with the first quarter of fiscal 2007, the company says.

Fulfillment costs decreased to 13.5% of net sales during Q1 of fiscal 2008, compared with 14.9% during the same quarter last year. The decrease was attributed to a continued reduction in distribution center and customer service labor costs as a percentage of revenue. Those reductions were driven by operational process improvements, along with the increase in web orders as a percentage of total revenue, the company says. Celebrate says it reduced fulfillment labor and related costs more than 24% from the same quarter last year, while shipping 10% fewer orders. The company shipped 222,000 orders in the first quarter of fiscal 2008.