Dan Hesse Quotations

Online travel sales fared even better this year. The sector was up 35 percent versus 2002 and has more than more than doubled since 2001. Non-travel sales recovered impressively from war-related softness early in the year, with 2003 posting a healthy 22 percent total increase over 2002.

Certainly, in the same way the Web has leveled the playing field for businesses of all sizes to compete, search has taken that one step further. It allows Mom and Pops to get that much closer to shoppers they wouldn't ordinarily come into contact with.

We think customers who are spending forty or fifty dollars a month now will move up to the eighty-to-ninety dollar range and use this as their (main) phone.

It is a good thing for Victoria's Secret and Limited in general. The cachet behind this brand is as important as the brand itself. Having the event as they enter the most important part of the year is going to help Victoria's Secret.

Last year, online retail totaled over $65 billion, up 26% over the prior year. That doesn't include auctions and travel, which take the number well over $100 billion.

Retailers turn a profit by bringing in new merchandise and pushing self-purchase categories like lingerie, shoes and denim. Retailing is an event-oriented business. Look at any national holiday, retailers seize on it and find a way to market heavily and drive traffic.

With the exception of Christmas Day, when so many consumers turn their attention from gift shopping to gift giving, our data reported sales over $100 million dollars in each day of this latest week.

We believe consumers' growing familiarity and confidence with online shopping, coupled with a dramatic increase in broadband penetration and continuing efforts by retailers to simplify the shopping process across channels, will translate to substantial gains for online merchants again this year.

With all these mergers, the future is unclear. This is a transitional time for vendors like Jones.

We've just closed another great year in online commerce. Consumers spent an average of $200 million per day throughout November and December, bringing holiday growth to just about the top end of our forecast of 25 to 30 percent.

While it's clear that a broad range of online merchants saw a strong season, multi-channel retailers were standouts this year. Many of the nation's leading retail brands flexed their muscle this season, with strategies including faster delivery options, significant site redesigns and effective cross-channel promotions.

We are entering into a big denim cycle and it's the most important for the back-to-school and teen sectors. The floors are loaded with denim and we expect it be a big area in focus through the end of summer.

We're this close, but we don't feel content by being this close. We're going to do everything we can to win the next game, to win the state title. That's what our goal has been from Day 1. We haven't told anyone anything otherwise. It's been our goal, and now we have a chance to achieve it.

With Lucent as one of our strategic vendors we will maintain our market leadership in our deployment of wireless voice and data services.

We certainly view this as a positive. It's no secret that Gap has been struggling for quite some time.

The simple fact is big budgets and optimization of search technology tend to win the battle.

North Carolina is an important market to us. It is our second-largest state with 1.5 million customers. Florida is the largest with 7.5 million customers.

You see on the tape that they (the defendants) are celebrating. They are mugging for the camera and making crude comments. They're dancing around. They know that she's unresponsive, they know that she's unconscious. They're deciding what to do next. They're competing with each other to see who can do the worst things to her.

This merger is a natural. With Vanguard Cellular, AT&T can significantly increase its footprint in the eastern U.S., providing additional service offers and availability to our customers.

The biggest surprise to us this year was the late-season surge in the week before Christmas. This occurred at a time when we usually see a pronounced drop-off in purchases. Instead, we saw a 57 percent growth surge driven by people buying online and picking up in stores as well as the commitment by online merchants to deliver in time.

This is one of what we hope is many steps that attempt to turn around the brand. It has to start with the product.

This is a company that will be aggressive and innovative in the marketplace.