| That being said we continue to be keenly focused on the balance between the need to grow and capture the market
opportunities and our desire to also drive improving financial performance. With this balance in mind we are continuing to provide guidance that our adjusted EBITDA for fiscal 2011 is targeted to be between $6 million and $7 million. We believe we
can achieve this result through higher than expected revenue results offset by calculated and carefully deployed incremental investments in our business which for the near term will result in higher overall growth costs. So in short, our current
story looks like this. Excitingly, we are growing much faster than we targeted, were investing heavier than originally expected in order to continue to fuel future growth and all the while were focused on ensuring that we also meet our
EBITDA targets for the year. We believe this as a prudent and well-balanced plan of attack given the opportunity set thats currently presented.
With that information as a backdrop, Ill let Mike provide some more details on the business development side and of our business
overall. Mike? Michael C. Willoughby,
President Thank you, Mark, and good morning
everyone. As Mark just said we couldnt be happier about the growth that weve experienced in the Service Fee business for the quarter and also for the first nine months of the year. There are numerous factors that have contributed to our
revenue growth including, obviously the launch of a number of new client e-commerce initiatives but were also very excited about the organic growth thats taking place among several of our established clients that is fueling our
growth. One of the great success stories that
were able to talk about, because theyre so vocal about the success of their program is Carters. Carters is a large contributor to our organic growth thus far this year. The Carters e-commerce solution has quickly ramped
up, and has exceeded everyones expectations since it launched in the spring of 2010. In fact Carters recently committed that its first full-year 2011 e-commerce sales projections are now in the neighborhood of $70 million of gross
merchandise value through the site and theyre forecasting sales in excess of $100 million for the full year 2012. These projections are several years ahead of Carters initial goals for this business.
Switching over to our most recent client wins, as Mark mentioned
earlier, part of our ongoing growth strategy has been focused on building relationships with companies that have a portfolio of meaningful brands as each one of the brands in the portfolio offers an opportunity to work with multiple brands through a
single master agreement. This approach has been proven with our Liz Claiborne relationship, as we now run multiple customized end-to-end e-commerce solutions for LCI brands. Its also represented in a few other master agreements such as P&G
and some that weve not disclosed publicly. As
such, Im pleased to say that in the third quarter, we announced two new client agreements with different companies that operate a portfolio of brands and we should see the benefits of those agreements in the coming years.
The first is a master agreement with Clarins Group, where we are
supporting the e-commerce initiatives for the Clarins, Thierry Mugler and Azzaro brands throughout the U.S. and Europe. Clarins Group is an international leader in the premium skincare beauty, spa and fragrance markets. And the relaunch of their
e-commerce sites for these brands in the U.S. took place in August and the European sites are rolling out in the fourth quarter of 2011.
PFSweb will provide multiple direct-to-consumer services for these specific brands through our facilities in the U.S. and in Europe,
as well as our tech center in the Philippines. Orders processed on the U.S. site will be fulfilled by our newest facility in Southaven, Mississippi while the orders that are accepted on the European sites will be fulfilled by one of our facilities
in Liege, Belgium. |