RH - Q3 2024
December 7, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Hello, and welcome to the Q3 2023 RH Q&A conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. We please ask that you restrict yourself to one question and one follow-up, and you may re-queue for further questions. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. I'll now turn the conference over to Allison Malkin. Please go ahead.
Allison Malkin (Partner)
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our third quarter fiscal 2023 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Gary Friedman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Jack Preston, Chief Financial Officer. Before we start, I would like to remind you of our legal disclaimer that we will make certain statements today that are forward-looking within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including statements about the outlook of our business and other matters referenced in our press release issued today. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our SEC filings, as well as our press release issued today, for a more detailed description of the risk factors that may affect our results.
Please also note that these forward-looking statements reflect our opinion only as of the date of this call, and we undertake no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revisions to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. Also, during this call, we may discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which adjust our GAAP results to eliminate the impact of certain items. You will find additional information regarding these non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of these non-GAAP to GAAP measures in today's financial results press release. A live broadcast of this call is also available on the Investor Relations section of our website at ir.rh.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Gary.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Great. Thank you, Allison. Good afternoon, everyone. As we usually do, we will start with our shareholder letter and open the call to questions. To our people, partners, and shareholders, net revenues of $751 million were at the midpoint of our guidance for the quarter, and adjusted operating margin, 7.3%, was slightly below expectations due to higher than anticipated expenses, including international openings, as well as costs related to our pending acquisition of the New York Guesthouse property and unsuccessful efforts to secure the iconic One Ocean Drive, Miami Beach location. While pleased with improved demand trends generated from the launch of our new RH Interiors and RH Contemporary collections, we experienced increased headwinds in early October when mortgage rates peaked above 8% and the Hamas invasion of Israel triggered the war in the Middle East.
With 82% of homeowners having mortgages below 5% and 62% below 4%, we continue to expect the existing housing market to remain frozen until interest rates and/or home prices fall meaningfully. Additionally, the home furnishings market has become increasingly promotional, and we believe that it will create a mix shift towards clearance products, pressuring gross margins. In light of the current market, we're delaying the mailing of our RH Modern sourcebook until the first quarter of 2024, when we believe demand trends will likely be more favorable. As a result, we are narrowing our revenue guidance range for the year to $3.06 billion-$3.08 billion and now expect adjusted operating margin to be in the range of 13.6%-14%.
As mentioned, we are in contract to make an opportunistic purchase of the New York Guesthouse property for approximately $58 million, scheduled to close in the fourth quarter. The building was appraised at $85 million last September, when the federal funds rate was half the level it is today. We believe controlling the outcome of this one-of-a-kind property is in our best interest. However, we will be poised to take advantage of any opportunity to do a sale-leaseback with the appropriate investor when the commercial real estate market rebounds in the future. Product elevation. We expect, we expect our demand trends to accelerate through the first half of 2024 and our product transformation - as our product transformation unfolds, in-stocks improve, we complete the reset of our galleries and introduce our new Modern and RH Outdoor sourcebooks in the first quarter of next year.
We anticipate our inflection point will peak in the second quarter of 2024 as our new collections fully ramp and we begin another cycle of sourcebook mailings, completing, transforming, and refreshing the entire brand over a 12-month period. We believe our latest collections re-reflect a level of design and quality inaccessible in our current market and a value proposition that will be disruptive across multiple markets, positioning RH to gain market share throughout fiscal 2024. While the product transformation of this magnitude will be margin dilutive in the short term, we believe it will become margin accretive over the long term as selling rates stabilize and allow for supply chain and sourcing efficiencies. Platform expansion. Our plan to expand the RH brand globally, address new markets locally, and transform our North American galleries represents a multibillion-dollar opportunity.
As discussed last quarter, we introduced RH to the UK this past summer in a dramatic and unforgettable fashion with the opening of RH England, the gallery at the historic Aynhoe Park, a seventeenth-century, 73-acre estate that is a celebration of history, design, food, and wine. We had a spectacular turnout for our opening event, and the global press coverage the brand received was multiple times greater than any gallery we had ever opened. Due to RH England's countryside location, we expect the majority of the revenues to be driven by our interior design and trade businesses, which are dependent on building books of business and high-value repeat clients, like interior design firms and hospitality projects. The quote book and demand continue to build monthly despite the seasonal nature of the location.
Our first U.K. Interiors sourcebook was in homes in October, and our next catalogs planned to be our RH Modern and RH Outdoor sourcebooks in the first quarter of 2024. In November, we opened two new international galleries, RH Munich and RH Düsseldorf. The response to our opening events was beyond our expectations, with Munich hosting over 900 chic attendees, roaming three floors with Cipriani Bellinis and Vesper Martinis, and traffic in both galleries has been strong since opening. Although RH England is our most unique and spectacular gallery to date, and the only one with a hospitality component in Europe, all three are architecturally impressive, multi-level expressions of the RH brand, only to be outdone by our even more impressive teams in each location.
While many retailers boast of a capital-light franchise or licensing approach to international expansion, we believe the only way to build a brand and optimize the business globally is to invest into and control the brand in the same manner we do locally, with people who live and breathe our values because it's their values. People who will lead our cause and build our culture because it's their cause and it's their culture. We believe when you aspire to be the very best in the world, there are no shortcuts, and greatness can never be delegated, nor licensed or franchised. Our next international openings include RH Brussels, a gallery on the Boulevard de Waterloo, and RH Madrid, a gallery on the Plaza Marqués de Salamanca in the first half of 2024, followed by RH Paris, the gallery on the Champs-Élysées in the fall of next year.
RH Paris is one building from the corner of the Avenue Montaigne, known as one of the most exclusive and luxurious arteries in the capital, and the chosen home of the major haute couture brands such as Chanel, Dior, Vuitton, Celine, Saint Laurent, and many others. We believe the space we've designed for this location will position RH as a placemaker and tastemaker in the luxury fashion capital of the world. RH Paris will be a six-floor jewel box connected by a dramatic ornate scissor stair and a central glass elevator that will whisk you up to the fifth floor and rooftop champagne and caviar bar, where you can take in views of the Eiffel Tower while enjoying our innovative menu featuring the finest Petrossian caviars.
You can also visit the second floor and dine in our dramatic atrium restaurant, inspired by the Grand Palais. With an onyx bar, floors, walls, and tables, looking out into the beautifully landscaped courtyard with 30-foot ivy-covered walls. It's like dining in a secret garden, erasing the noise and chaos of the outside world. Mark your calendars for early September. RH Paris will be an opening party you won't want to miss. We are also under construction in London and Milan, in inspiring spaces that will celebrate the heritage of the historic structures and will integrate full expressions of our hospitality experiences. Our current plans call for opening both galleries in 2025. We're also anticipating gaining a local approval soon for RH Sylt, the gallery in Double Bay, with plans to open in late 2025 or early 2026.
Regarding our North American transformation, we opened RH Indianapolis, the gallery at the DeHaan Estate, one of the most accurate Palladian-style villas ever built in the United States. The estate spans 151 acres and over 60 rooms overlooking a 35-acre lake, and represents one of the largest, most inspiring, and immersive physical expressions of our brand to date. With construction delays pushing RH Cleveland into the first quarter of next year, our plan now includes opening 5 North American design galleries in 2024, inclusive of RH Palo Alto, RH Cleveland, and RH Raleigh in the first half of next year, and RH Montecito and RH Newport Beach in the second half. We also believe there is an opportunity to address new markets locally by opening design studios in neighborhoods, towns, and small cities where the wealthy and affluent live, visit, and vacation.
We have several existing locations that have validated this strategy in East Hampton, Yountville, Los Gatos, Pasadena, and our former San Francisco gallery in the Design District, where we've generated annual revenues in the range of $5 million-$20 million in 2,000-5,000 sq ft. We have secured our first new location for a design studio in Palm Desert, and should open in the first half of 2024. We have identified over 40 locations that are incremental to our previous plans in North America and believe the results of these design studios will provide data that could lead to opening larger galleries in those markets. The RH business vision and ecosystem, the long view. We believe there are those with taste and no scale, and those with scale and no taste, and the idea of scaling taste is large and far-reaching.
Our goal to position RH as the arbiter of taste for the home has proven to be both disruptive and lucrative as we continue our quest to build the most admired brand in the world.... Our brand attracts the leading designers, artisans, and manufacturers, scaling and rendering their work more valuable across our integrated platform, enabling RH to curate the most compelling collection of luxury home products on the planet. Our efforts to elevate and expand our collection will continue with the introduction of RH Couture Upholstery, RH Bespoke Furniture, RH Color, RH Antiques and Artifacts, RH Atelier, and other new collections scheduled to launch over the next decade. Our plan to open immersive design galleries in every major market will unlock the value of our vast assortment, generating revenues of $5 billion-$6 billion in North America and $20 billion-$25 billion globally.
Our strategy is to move the brand beyond curating and selling products, to conceptualizing and selling spaces by building an ecosystem of products, places, services, and spaces that establishes the RH brand as a global thought leader, taste, and placemaker. Our products are elevated and rendered more valuable by our architecturally inspiring galleries, which are further elevated and rendered more valuable by our interior design services and seamlessly integrated hospitality experience. Our hospitality efforts will continue to elevate the RH brand as we extend beyond the four walls of our galleries into RH guest houses, where our goal is to create a new market for travelers seeking privacy and luxury in the $200 billion North American hotel industry. Additionally, we are creating bespoke experiences like RH Yountville, an integration of food, wine, art, and design in the Napa Valley.
RH One and RH Two are private jets, and RH Three, our luxury yacht that is available for charter in the Caribbean and Mediterranean, where the wealthy and affluent visit and vacation. These immersive experiences expose new and existing customers to our evolving authority in architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture. This leads to our long-term strategy of building the world's first consumer-facing architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture services platform inside our galleries, elevating the RH brand and amplifying our core business by adding new revenue streams while disrupting and redefining multiple industries.
Our strategy comes full circle as we begin to conceptualize and sell spaces, moving beyond the $170 billion home furnishings market into the $1.7 trillion North American housing market with the launch of RH Residences, fully furnished luxury homes, condominiums, and apartments with integrated services that deliver taste and time value to discerning, time-starved consumers. The entirety of our strategy comes to life digitally with the World of RH, an online portal where customers can explore and be inspired by the depth and dimension of our brand. Our authority as an arbiter of taste will be further amplified when we introduce RH Media, a content platform that will celebrate the most innovative and influential leaders who are shaping the world of architecture and design.
Our plan to expand the RH ecosystem globally multiplies the market opportunity to $7-$10 trillion, one of the largest and most valuable addressed by any brand in the world today. A 1% share of the global market represents a $70-$100 billion opportunity. Our ecosystem of products, places, services, and spaces inspires customers to dream, design, dine, travel, and live in a world thoughtfully curated by RH, creating an emotional connection unlike any other brand in the world. Taste can be elusive, and we believe no one is better positioned than RH to create an ecosystem that makes taste inclusive, and by doing so, elevating and rendering our way of life more valuable. Never underestimate the power of a few good people who don't know what can't be done.
For the past 23 years, we've heard others tell us what can't be done, and for the past 23 years, we've failed to listen. We avoided bankruptcy while being accused of lunacy. While others have been shrinking and closing stores, we've been building the largest and most inspiring spaces in the world. When Wall Street didn't think our stock was worth buying, we bought 60% of the shares ourselves. When everyone told us we should be working from home, we were in the center of innovation, working on rebuilding our new home, our brand, and it's almost ready for prime time. From the largest product information transformation in our history, to the most inspiring and unusual retail experiences in the world, from couches to caviar, beds to Bellinis, architecture to airplanes, homes to hotels, I should say guest houses. From Pittsburgh to Paris, London to...
Los Angeles to London, Boston to Brussels, Miami to Munich, and San Francisco to Sydney. Soon, the world will be within our reach. Never underestimate the power of a few good people who don't know what can't be done, especially these people. Onward, Team RH. Carpe Diem, Gary. Operator, I'll now open the call to questions.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. If you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to remove yourself from the queue, simply press star one again. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from the line of Simeon Gutman of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Simeon Ari Gutman (Executive Director, Hardlines, Broadlines and Food Retail Equity Research)
Hi, everyone. Hi, Gary, Jack, good afternoon. I want to ask about contemporary. I know it's early. I think some of the research was that it shouldn't cannibalize other aesthetics. I don't know how much data you have on it yet, but is that fair and how sales are progressing? And then I don't think... Can you just remind us, you've never touched pricing on contemporary. I know we talked about changing some pricing on some items, but I don't think it ever related to the new collection. Thanks.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, we reviewed kind of pricing and, you know, our value equation throughout the brand, so everything was touched. I mean, it's—if you look at the contemporary brand, the contemporary book, this remailing of the book is, it's got a very high news content. So, but all the products kind of been—I don't think there's anything we didn't reprice. So, yeah, we touched. Yeah, but look, the contemporary book got in mid-October, early to mid-October. It kind of hit right as the war was breaking out and interest rates peaked, so it's hard to kind of see the initial reaction to it. You know, there's collections, like, like any collection, there's collections that are selling really well, some are selling good, some not so well.
You know, I feel very confident that, you know, the overall mailing of Contemporary is gonna be incremental, you know, as we believe Interiors has been, and as we believe Modern will be, and as we believe Couture Upholstery will be, and Bespoke Furniture will be, and everything we do. You know, so look, we couldn't be more excited. We're, you know, we're sailing into the, you know, probably one of the biggest headwinds any of us has, you know, experienced in the housing market. You know, while it's not the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, it is from a housing point of view. You know, it's that bad. So, you know, you're lapping, you know, really big down numbers in the housing market, and they're still down.
You know, so, you know, you've got a little lift in the new home market, but that's only 10% of the market. So, you know, we've got a, you know, as I said, you know, in this latest shareholder letter, and I said last time, we'll continue—we should continue to see our business inflect, you know, through the rest of this quarter and into, you know, through the first half of next year and hit an inflection point, I think, kind of mid-late to second quarter. And that'll be despite kind of the housing market, unless there's, you know, something where there's another gap down. But it seems, you know, it seems that they've got inflation somewhat under control. You know, it seems like the Fed's becoming more confident.
You know, if we can start to see a move in interest rates, and the easing in interest rates, the Federal funds rates and, and, you know, the mortgage rates, that'll help. You know, while mortgage rates went down a little, you know, you still have an affordability issue with, you know, 82% of the people with mortgages at 5% or under, and 62%, 4% or under, and 25% are under 3%. So, that's the biggest issue facing the market today, you know, and, and that's why we don't have inventory. There's not inventory in the, you know, housing market, and why prices aren't coming down because there's not inventory.
You know, you have some pricing coming down here or there in some markets, but, you know, the good news for us is, you know, we're just taking a long view. We're trying to position the brand and the business, you know, for the next big run, and, you know, and I think we're gonna be meaningfully better positioned than anybody else in our sector. You know, not by a little, by a lot. You know, it's like when this housing... You know, we'll outperform, you know, the market and the competition, I think, over the, you know, the next period. You know, we gave some market share back, you know, during the post-COVID period. We haven't been promotional like everybody else got.
Everybody got on the other side of COVID, and everybody got promotional. Even though people say they're not promotional, or they're not doing site-wide promotions or whatever the language is, you know, just go on people's websites. You know, it's a very promotional environment out there and has been. And I think what you're seeing now is the people that got promotional are now gonna lap their promotional stance, and they have to go up against that. So that was a lever post-COVID for people to, you know, turn on the promotions, lift the business. Now everybody's cycling that, and, you know, I think you're gonna see people's—as you're seeing it, people's and businesses inflecting downwards in this environment, and our business is inflecting upwards, and it will continue to do so.
Simeon Ari Gutman (Executive Director, Hardlines, Broadlines and Food Retail Equity Research)
As a follow-up, can you talk about your own inventory position, the ratio of, I know, discounted or clearance items? Because you mentioned the shifting to that could weigh on margin. And if you have stuff that needs to be cleared or contemplated to be cleared, does it make sense to tactically move it, move it out of the way to make way for all the new product that's coming?
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
We are. We just don't want to lead with clearance and lead with pricing. I mean, we'll have a few emails that go out there that talk about, you know, end of year, you know, end of year sales to, you know, to deal with the with the clearance goods and some stuff like that. We'll and we'll be aggressive pricing those goods, so we, you know, get the inventories clean and, you know, turn inventory into cash. We don't want it sitting around on the balance sheet. So, yeah, you'll see us take the, you know, the appropriate action here. And, yeah, so, you know, but nothing we wouldn't normally do. We just don't wanna lead with promotions or start to, you know, turn the business back in that direction.
We're almost to the other side of this thing. I can't believe, you know, maybe we've got another 6-12 months, but I think. Yeah, you get to the second half of 2024, unless, again, they haven't got inflation under control, I think we're gonna see, you know, we're gonna see the Fed take an easing approach. I would be surprised if they left interest rates at these levels the entire year next year. But nonetheless, even if they do, you're gonna see us perform pretty well in any environment based on, you know, just based on the work we've done and what's in the pipeline and the plans we have. I mean, they're all very big moves. This is by far the biggest product transformation in the history of our industry.
It's multiple times bigger than anything we've ever done.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from the line of Steven Zaccone of Citi. Your line is open.
Steven Zaccone (Director, Equity Research, Hardlines Retail & Services)
Great, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask on operating margin, and I wanted to ask in particular about your ability to protect the operating margin. You know, we're now at a level that's below 2019, you know, granted, the macro is challenging, but can you just talk through your comfort with protecting operating margin? What are some levers that you can pull if the macro deteriorates further into next year?
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, I mean, you know, we're not—we don't have a strategy to protect operating margin. I mean, we're—you know, you're comparing it to 2019. Are you kidding me? You know, like, why would you do that? It's nothing like 2019. We're in the biggest housing downfall than anybody's seen. You know, so—
Jack Preston (CFO)
Experienced massive, massive inflation since that time-
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah
Jack Preston (CFO)
on so many items of P&L costs.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, like, that's not where I'd be focused. I, you know, like, I mean, you can focus there, you'll just miss everything that's gonna unfold here, you know, if you wanna focus on that. I mean, we're, we're investing for the next cycle. We're investing for the long term. We're not trying to protect the operating margin a point or two. I mean, if, if that's gonna get people really fired up about the long-term strategy of this company, it's probably the wrong shareholders.
Jack Preston (CFO)
And Steve, just one thing to comment about. Again, you mentioned lever, but just more of a point of a tailwind is that, you know, that we have elevated markdown activity this year, that as we cycle through that next year, that, you know, that could unveil itself as a tailwind next year. So we'll talk more about that.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah.
Jack Preston (CFO)
in March, but you know, that's one aspect that's positive.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah. I mean, the operating margins are gonna be fine, you know, so, the cash flow is gonna be fine. We didn't buy back $2.2 billion for stock, you know, because we think the model has a problem. You know, we're going through the biggest transformation in this entire industry. And so you wanna think about what's gonna be on the other side of that, not what's the operating margin in the next quarter or two. Whether that bounces around a point or two, like, that's not, as the biggest shareholder in this company, that's not what I'm worried about.
Steven Zaccone (Director, Equity Research, Hardlines Retail & Services)
Okay, fair enough. Follow up then on just the promotional aspect to the furnishings industry. How long do you think that lasts? Is that something that continues, you know, for the next couple of years, or is it something that probably is finished by the end of 2024?
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Oh, you mean just the broader industry?
Steven Zaccone (Director, Equity Research, Hardlines Retail & Services)
Yes.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, no, I think the broader industry is back to pre-COVID, you know, pricing and promotions, and it'll be there forever now. Once you turn that on, you can't go back. So, you know, maybe the emails look different or they call them different, but, you know, you go look at the websites, I mean, you're getting pelted with sale emails, and have been for over a year. That's why, you know, as I say, that's why everybody's now cycling that. So, you know, there's easy business. We could have turned on promotions over the last year on the other side of COVID and moved our business 15-20 points. It just would have permanently created a different model. So, you know, look, some people are promoting and cutting ad costs.
Some people are doing a lot of different things and hoping they have a massively different model. I just, you know, there might be people that come out of this thing with a slightly better model. Maybe there's some things they learned. Maybe they don't have to spend as much in ad costs, maybe this or that. So, but it's not really people that we compete with that I, you know, that I'm too concerned with. I'm more focused on, you know, what we are doing and what our big strategies are, and you know, how this business is gonna be positioned, you know, for the next, you know, five years. And, you know, and we really like what I see. I think this is the best, the best work we've ever done, you know.
So what you're gonna see unfolding over the next several quarters, and not just... It won't stop there. While I say that the inflection point, you know, will peak in Q2, that's just based on what's in the pipeline. What's coming on the next cycle likely will create higher and higher peaks, right? Because we've just, you know, we're creating an entirely new foundation for the business. You know, a stronger, bigger, better foundation for the business. You know, where we got arrogant about around pricing during COVID, and, you know, we had all the, you know, the price increases from the tariffs and then the supply chain, you know, and raw material goods going up. You know, we're just a lot stronger, and we're gonna play a very aggressive, you know, game because we can.
We have the scale to buy bigger than other people. We have the scale to get better pricing. We have the platform to present it. And so, you know, where I think we've lost some market share because we were, you know, slow to kind of ramp back up, you know, the product development and marketing of the business post-COVID. You know, we rebuilt those muscles, you know, where we were arrogant from a pricing point of view, but there's no arrogance anymore. There's just an incredible competitive focus to win. And so, you know, and the market's gonna do what the market does. I don't know. If I was, you know, all the people that are out there that have been promoting this past year, what are they gonna do, stop promoting?
Their business will go down 15 or 20 points. Yeah, you know, try not promoting in the furniture business when you've been promoting. Like, it just doesn't work. You have to go through a whole year cycle, like we went through when we moved to membership. You know, that's a painful thing to do, and, you know, you have to be someone who owns a lot of the company like I did. Otherwise, you're gonna be a CEO that's under attack by activists, you know, if you go through a transition like that. So, you know, there's people that say, "Oh, we're gonna do like, an RH membership model." Good luck with that. You know, it's they're not easy things to do. You know, we spent 3 years planning that and transitioning the business and the model.
You know, to stop promoting when you've been promoting, yeah, you're back on that promotional drive. I, you know, it's you can't just get off it.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from the line of Chris Horvers of JP Morgan. Your line is open.
Chris Horvers (Managing Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Thanks. Good evening. A couple of follow-up questions on the gross margin. So, you know, once we get past holiday, do you think it'll be clean to start 2024? And is it fair to say that the vast majority of the non-fixed cost deleverage in gross margin was clearance? And to your comment, Jack, is there any reason why you wouldn't get that back? Presumably with all the newness, you wouldn't expect a lot of markdowns.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah. Yeah, I think, look, I think-
Chris Horvers (Managing Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Transition out, right?
Jack Preston (CFO)
Yeah. I mean, look, starting the year, we're gonna be in a better position than you know, let's say, the start of the quarter. But I think we'll be going through... continuing to sell through the markdown goods, you know, by the end of the first half, you know, that's probably-
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, I mean, we'll always have some-
Jack Preston (CFO)
Right.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
some level of markdowns, right? But what you wanna think about, what does the overall mix look like? So the mix is gonna be, you know, a heavier markdown mix, you know, in Q4, and you'll have some of that move into Q1. It'll probably lighten up, and it'll lighten up in Q2 as we sell down. And you're gonna have a... As the quarters go, you're gonna have a higher mix of new, you know, higher-margin product. But yeah, so what I said in the letter, you know, over the short term, it's margin. The transformation we're making is margin dilutive, but long term, it's margin accretive. You know, it's mix shifts, you know, as the inventory rebalances. So,
Chris Horvers (Managing Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. And then one of the questions we also get from investors is, you know, trying to think about... There's a lot going on with all the new galleries, and the accelerations of the books, the Source Books back to what it was, you know, pre-COVID. As you think about what's implied here or the third quarter as Q3 NA dollars, is like, is that the right base? I guess said another way, does advertising, is there any reason advertising steps up again next year? And if you think about, you know, the complexion of the openings next year with more international, are we just sort of naturally raising the expense base, you know, given those two factors?
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, well, I mean, when it's a perfect time to guide, next year, we'll guide next year. So we're not guiding next year right now. But, look, you know, there's always gonna be certain startup costs, right, when you're ramping up new countries and things like that, you know, and investments to get the galleries up and running, to get people trained, to, you know, get restaurants opened, to get the home delivery network set up and operating and people trained. And then you'll cycle those things, right? So, you know, are we gonna have some cycles to get around as we open different countries? Yeah, sure. But once, you know, business is ramped, you know, you cycle those things.
So, yeah, you know, I look, we have a lot of confidence in the long-term margin, you know, of the business and the model. So, you know, like, I don't think there's any reason why this, you know, why this business and brand doesn't get back into the 20% range as, you know, we cycle through. I mean, you're not gonna get there in one of the worst housing markets. This is. I mean, you know, we compare the exact numbers to 2008 and 2009, but this is. This is. If it's not the worst, it's the second worst in my career, and I think I've been doing this as long as anybody leading a company in this industry. You know, there might be some people that have been doing it longer than me.
I don't know too many, but I haven't seen a market like this, you know, and how to navigate through a, you know, housing market downturn like this. You know, so, you know, I can't remember when people were, you know, locked into low interest rates and they can't step up because it, you know, different interest rates. So you got to kind of look beyond this kind of temporal time. I can't believe that we're gonna be in this lockup like this forever. Like, could it go through 2024? It could. So what? You know, it's. It doesn't change the long term, you know, and we're, you know, the good thing is we've now cycled around, so we didn't bite on the promotional, you know, drag like everybody else did.
So we gave away some market share because we didn't do that. But at the same time, we've sharpened our value proposition at regular price, and we're gonna be tough to compete with, you know, even if people go on sale. You know, people just don't have the buying power or the platform to present it that we do. And so, you know, I wouldn't want to be on the other side of this big move we're making.
Jack Preston (CFO)
Chris, you know, you asked about Q3 being a base. You know, we don't look at it as a single quarter as a base. You've heard me talk about if you're gonna, you know, try to read some trends on a base then, you know, look for a full four quarters, given the, given the cadence of advertising timing.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, you can't, like it-
Jack Preston (CFO)
You can't just use a quarter.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, I mean, we used to be able to mail a book, and we amortized it over, you know, 6 or 12 months. Now, you mail a book and, yeah, the day you drop it is the day the ad costs hit it. So, you know, and obviously, you know, the book's more valuable than that single period, but, you know, there's just an accounting rule change that, you know, is gonna make a business like ours kind of lumpy, right? From, you know, quarter to quarter, based on, you know, the ad cost hitting when the book drops. You know, and no amortization of the ad cost, which doesn't make sense. You know, you're not gonna get all the sales that week.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from-
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
If somebody-
Operator (participant)
Curtis Nagle of Bank of America. Your line is open.
Curtis Nagle (Director, Equity Research, US Internet)
Great. Thanks very much. Just kind of a quick one, more of a clarification than anything else. So just in the share letter, there was a comment about reaching kind of a peak inflection point in second quarter of next year. Is that in terms of kind of a ramp? Is that demand trends, you know, flow through revenue? Just if you could specify that a little bit more for me, that would be really helpful. I'd appreciate it.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, yeah, that's... That'll be, you know, that'll be demand trends, you know, which will turn into revenue and, you know, there's gonna be just continued step-ups. You know, there's gonna be step-ups as we get in stock. There's gonna be step-ups as we finish the gallery transformation. You know, there's anytime you, you know, you have big moves like this, you're gonna have some things, some collections that are just wildly better than you could have thought, and you're not gonna have... Well, you know, we have a collection here that is the best collection in the history of RH by probably 40%. We're not gonna catch up on the inventory until March, April, somewhere around there. You know, so, you know, there's, there's...
You know, you got all these imbalances when you have these, this much newness. So you've got to kind of rightsize all that. You've got to get in stock, because, you know, because things like that and other collections and things are selling so well, you can't even put them in the stores, right? So you've got too much demand, so you've got to fill the demand. So, you know, some of the product that you're planning to transform the galleries with now is blown out. And then you've got to let, you know, the manufacturing base, you know, just get their legs underneath them with all this newness, right? And, you know, they're gonna get more efficient, and things are just... The flywheel is gonna be running.
Yeah, we will then have, again, we're gonna have the second round of the book mailings, which is gonna have another... Well, I mean, modern is gonna be massively new, but then, you know, all the books will remail in the first half. We may, you know, modern because we're pushing to the later, may go, you know, in the third quarter. But, but all those books will have another, probably an average 20%-40% more newness based on what's in the pipeline. You know, so it's, like, big. We usually have 15%-20% newness. And so, you know, you—it's the, the, basically, the entire brand is gonna transform, and the assortment is gonna expand on top of that.
And so you just gotta kind of, you know, get it all dialed in, get all the inventory balanced, you know, get it, get everything set. You know, some things you planned, you're gonna put in the galleries, in the retail galleries, and all of a sudden the demand doesn't look good, and you're like, "Oh, let's swap that out with something else." And so, you know, you're, you know, you're reading and reacting to real data now. And so we like what we see in the data. You know, we like what we have in the pipeline. We like when we, you know, we dimensionalize all the trends and all the data and say: What does this all look like three months from now, six months from now, when this happens, that happens, that happens?
Yeah, that's when we think we'll for this big transformation. That's when we should start to reach peak inflection.
Curtis Nagle (Director, Equity Research, US Internet)
Got it. And then just a follow-up for Gary. Comments in Germany were interesting, right? A lot stronger, sounded like than you'd expected. I don't think you put a ton of marketing behind it. So what drove it? I mean, you know, at least from what I've seen online, you know, great locations, you know, beautiful exteriors, all the rest of it. But in terms of just this response, what's resonating and, you know, anything you could say in terms of just, I don't know, I guess the potential relative to some of the- I guess the average size in terms of revenue for US, if you could size that, it- unless it's too early.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, I think, you know, I think, just in general, we're in highly populated, you know, shopping areas, right? So, you know, in Düsseldorf, we're on the main shopping boulevard, you know, dead center, across from Chanel, you know, a few doors down is Hermès. You know, it is the main luxury shopping street, and we're dead center. You know, so there's a lot of people walking by and a lot of people walking in. In Munich, you know, we're right in one of the key hearts of town, you know, and, where there's a lot of people. And you really can't compare those to what we did in England, right? Like, I, you know, said since the beginning, England—we didn't do England through a lens of commerce first. We did it through a lens of conversation first.
How do we create the right conversation with the brand? How do we make the right first impression? How do we do something that's so extraordinary, you know, it, it gets high-end luxury consumers to look at us differently, think about us differently? You know, so, so England is really, you know, it's a big brand investment, but there's not a lot of people—there's no one walking by that store. Not, not a single human is walking by. You gotta drive there. It's an hour and 45 minutes out of London. I mean, the business is building. We just, we just closed our... Today, we closed our, you know, biggest sale yet. It's $300,000 for a chalet where?
Operator (participant)
In the French Alps.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
In the French Alps. It's chalet in the French Alps. But, you know, so, you know, the book of business is building, the design business with our, you know, our internal interior designers is building, with our trade clients is building, you know, all those pieces of business are building nicely. And what's funny, I really thought, "Oh, shit, this time of the year, it's gonna go slow," because it's, you know, the weather's not that nice out there right now, and, you know, it's not like you're walking around the grounds unless you've got some heavy coats and, you know, some rubber boots and stuff. So, but our demand and our book of business and everything is building still, month-over-month. And, you know, so the brand just...
Yeah, it's gonna take a while for the brand to just people know we're here and know who we are and what we're doing and, Yeah, remember, people only buy furniture really every, you know, kind of 5-20 years, right? Depending if you bought another new home or what you did. So, you know, you don't generally just go out to furniture stores, you know, unless, unless there's a need. So, you know what, you know, RH England just doesn't have the traffic of, you know, the locations that we have in Germany, and so this is just our first look at the locations in Germany, and we like what we see. We like, you know, the people that are coming in, you know, they're starting to engage our designers. They're starting to learn about the brand.
Some know about the brand, some have lived in America and now live in Germany, and, you know, some are telling us at the opening party in Munich, you know, I had a couple, how they ship their own been shipping their own containers to Munich, and now they're so excited we're here, you know, they're, you know. And, yeah, so we, we have a lot of fans. I mean, what I was, I think, beyond my expectation was just the excitement for the brand and the quality of people that were at the opening events. It was, I mean, it was as good as you could have expected. And so, you know, that's, again, that's, again, like creating another conversation. Those people telling their friends and others, you know, you know, you just, you know, let that, you know, start building.
And, you know, I would expect these countries are gonna probably have pretty big compounding comps for the first three years, you know, much bigger. You know, like in America, when we open a new store, even if we're not in a market, we're already in that market. We're RH. Like, we can open in Milwaukee, you know, next month, and we don't have a gallery there, but we do millions of dollars in Milwaukee. People are shopping from us, you know, online. They know the brand. And so, you know, when we open in a place like that, you know, people are lined up ready to shop. There's people that have been shopping, and they're ready to place transactions and place orders, and you have immediate demand.
I think in these new countries, you know, people are gonna come in and get to know us, and, you know, we'll start working on. You know, they'll get to know the brand. We'll start working on design projects, and, you know, and then people will get familiar with, you know, who we are, what our prices are, you know, how we compare, and, and start to interact with us. But it'll happen faster in Germany than it did in England. You know, like, they're just not that much traffic. I mean, we did catch, you know, the back half of the summer, and so, you know, we did have some really high-quality traffic out there.
But I think what I'm amazed by in RH England is that the demand is building, you know, into the slow season. I'm like: Huh! That's interesting. You know, so we like that. And we've only mailed one book, you know, and not to that many people. So, you know, just learning about how you invest in marketing and advertising and building the brand, gonna be a lot to learn here, you know, for us. But, you know, we like what we see. I mean, I'm, you know, pleasantly surprised, you know, how the business is continuing to build in RH England.
I'm really happy with just the initial turnouts for the events and, and then the amount of traffic just coming into the galleries, you know, just exploring and coming to see us. You know, so, you know, the demand, you know, if that's happening, the demand will then start building, right? So we'll see. But, you know, we're gonna know a lot more every quarter, you know, every six months, every year here.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from the line of Max Rakhlenko of TD Cowen. Your line is open.
Max Rakhlenko (Director, Consumer - Retail & Fitness Research Analyst)
Great, thanks a lot. So in the letter, you noted being pleased with improved trends from the launch of Interiors and Contemporary. So just curious if, if you could frame the uplift in the context of revenues down 13 and change. And then how should we think about the magnitude of growth in the next couple quarters from those two collections? And bigger picture on contemporary, Gary, what's your latest thinking around how large this collection can become?
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, you know, it's funny. We don't primarily look at it. You know, it's really what we look at is kind of one giant assortment packaged in different vehicles, right? That allows it to break through and, you know, present an aesthetic and so on and so forth to the consumer. But it's not like we sit here and go: How's Contemporary doing? How's Interiors doing? How's this? We say: How's the furniture, you know, the Upholstery business doing? And we're looking at every sofa in the entire assortment, whether it's Interiors, Contemporary, Modern, you know. So it's not so much the books from how we manage the business. The books is how we present it to the consumer. We look at the entire RH assortment, right?
Then we're looking at, you know, the books they're in and, you know, how we're gonna adjust and what's working and what's not working and, you know, so on and so forth. So, you know, so I, you know, when you think about it, maybe from the way you're thinking about it, okay, will that, you know, will that assortment, you know, when you parse it out, how big will it be? It's gonna depends on how big we make that book, how big we make that assortment, you know, how many things we put into Contemporary, or how many things that wind up going into Interiors, and how many things go into Modern. You know, 'cause you've got some things that, you know, the lines are blurred. We could put it in almost any of the three books.
You know, you know, so, I, you know, I think about the way, the way I think about this today is RH is going through a massive product transformation. It's the biggest thing they've ever done. You know, how does the whole thing look? You know, and as the whole assortment gets out there, Interiors, Contemporary, Modern, Outdoor, right? As the books get out there, as the products get into the galleries, as we get, you know, get in stock, what does that total assortment look like and how it is performing versus the old assortments? We think it's gonna be meaningfully accretive.
Max Rakhlenko (Director, Consumer - Retail & Fitness Research Analyst)
Got it. That's helpful.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
And then-
Max Rakhlenko (Director, Consumer - Retail & Fitness Research Analyst)
No, that's great. And then, I guess, can you speak to the phasing of the new products to galleries and your confidence of completion by the end of first half of 2024? And then specifically, will all the galleries be touched, will some get more newness than others? Or how should we just think about the totality of the in-gallery resets?
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
You mean the resets, the floor sets.
Max Rakhlenko (Director, Consumer - Retail & Fitness Research Analyst)
Oh, the floor sets.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, I think, yeah, they're being done in stages, you know, as you know, as, as we're ramping up inventory. And it depends, again, it's that, you know, if you're ramping up... If all of a sudden you have, you have some really high-performing collections, you're just not gonna be able—you're gonna have to fill demand and not put the goods in the galleries, right? You're gonna have to wait. And so I'd say we're gonna get, I don't know, 90% in stock in Q1 or something.
Jack Preston (CFO)
As far as completion of the floor sets-
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah
Jack Preston (CFO)
... probably a March timeframe.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah.
Jack Preston (CFO)
No, it wouldn't be the end of the quarter, but as of where we are today-
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah
Jack Preston (CFO)
It'll be in March.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah. And some galleries will get, you know, prioritized versus others. Yeah, I think it's, you know, I think we'll be in really good shape by the end of Q1, going into Q2, and then I think by mid to end of Q2, and that's why I say that should be our kind of inflection point. I mean, based on all the numbers we're looking at today, you know, we don't have data on Modern yet. We won't until we mail that, you know, so that'll have, you know, same kind of challenges, lots of new product. We're gonna, yeah, with any new product, when you don't have data, you're gonna be 100% wrong with your inventory investment. Like, I've been doing this a long time. I've never seen anybody buy new product exactly right.
So it's you're gonna be a little overbought, underbought, a lot overbought, you know, underbought. You know, so because you just don't, it's, you know, you don't have exact science, you don't have any trends on any of the newness. So, you know, it takes a few quarters to kind of, you know, get the trends, you know, read the trends right, make the adjustments you need to, get the orders corrected, you know, make less of this, make more of this, and, you know, let the factories get adjusted, you know, as they're ramping up on a lot of new products. So, yeah, but, you know, that, that'll all work itself out. Again, I just think about this as, like, you know, the next couple of quarters will be meaningful.
If we're, if we're sitting here, you know, the end of Q2, and we didn't get the inflection point we needed, that would surprise me. You know, that we, we think we're gonna get... It's not a little one, you know, it's gonna be meaningful, and it's gonna keep building. You know, as all these things happen, in stocks, gallery sets, you know, modern, outdoor, and then a recycling and remailing of those books with more newness, right? With probably 30%-40% more newness. And, and then you'll have some adjustments with that 30%-40%, but, but that'll be much smaller compared to what we're doing today.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from the line of Steven Forbes of Guggenheim Securities. Your line is open.
Steven Forbes (Senior Managing Director, Equity Research - Hardlines Retail)
Hey, Gary, Jack. Maybe it might be a repetitive question on the product transformation, but you know, Gary, I was really just hoping you can, you know, if there's anything you can give us or speak to, whether it's sort of what you're seeing now or even a reference point back in history on sort of prior product transformation cycles, that can help us contextualize, like, what the potential magnitude of the inflection that it's on the horizon is, and whether we can reference or peak demand, you know, during COVID, or just anything that helps us think through, you know, really, what should we be expecting behind this product transformation?
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
I think it's all gonna depend on what, you know, what the macro is doing in the housing market. You know, so, and as the housing market stays where it is, I mean, again, let us guide you next year, you know, like you'll get a better sense, you know, so, you know, and we'll have a little bit more data. But, you know, yeah, I'd just say generally, I'd be surprised if anybody's outperforming us. When we get to Q2 of next year, I'd be shocked. Now, maybe someone will shock me. I don't think so.
Steven Forbes (Senior Managing Director, Equity Research - Hardlines Retail)
We'll anxiously await that. And then just a quick follow-up, the 70 new collections that were referenced sort of in past calls, where are we today with the number of collections that are out, and how many will be launched by spring next year, by fall next year? What sort of the pipeline look like?
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, there's more than 70 now. You know, so, you know, I see, we'll have, probably, when modern, you know, with modern hitting and, outdoor hitting, it will probably be somewhere between 70 and I'd say ninety—up to 90. And, you know, with more in the pipeline, and we have, we have a whole another book we're working on, you know, so that we haven't announced yet. So you'll hear about that, that we think is gonna be meaningful. And it's not, it's not bespoke, it's not couture. It's something we haven't, we haven't talked about. And that's gonna be a whole new big thing. So, you know, so we're working on that, too. Yeah, so just a lot's coming, Steve. Buckle up.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Lasser of UBS. Your line is open.
Michael Lasser (Managing Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst - Hardlines, Broadlines & Food Retail)
Good evening. Thank you so much for taking my question. Gary, why do you think you are losing market share? If it's an issue with pricing, how much more do you think you need to lower prices in order to stabilize or gain market share?
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, I don't think we're-- well, I mean, did you miss the whole first part of this conference call? And I'd be like, I can repeat myself. You know, the transformation's in the early stages, the goods aren't in stock, they're not in the galleries yet.... We haven't been through a full mailing cycle, you know, and I don't believe-- You know, I think we've massively closed the gap. I think we're gaining market share on a lot of people today, and, you know, there might be a few people out there, you know, that are outperforming us at a demand point of view. I mean, they may not outperform us, you know, in the next quarter. I'd say there's going to be an inflection very soon here.
You know, and so what do we have to do? Well, everything I just said, you know. So I don't think you want me to repeat myself, do you? Like, you know, I don't think we got to lower our prices anymore. I don't think we've got to... You know, the goods just got to get in stock. We got to get the galleries reset, you know, and we got to go through, you know, the next cycle and, you know, we'll be off to the races, so.
Michael Lasser (Managing Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst - Hardlines, Broadlines & Food Retail)
My follow-up question is on the degree to which your P&L this quarter benefited from lower freight and transportation costs. Was that more significant... Could you, A, quantify it? And B, was it more significant than the P&L had experienced in the second quarter? Thank you very much.
Jack Preston (CFO)
Michael, we've talked about this a few quarters now. You know, we've given our turn, and, you know, the way, you know, Fernando and his team, you know, attacked ocean freight, where the, you know, where the bulk of the increases in costs had occurred, through the pandemic. You know, we- those turned over last year, right? We peaked in May, as far as the highest contracted rates we've ever seen, and then every month thereafter, it's been a decline. And now, you know, in many markets, we're back to or close to 2019 levels. Right, Fernando? So, you know, we- as far as, you know, kind of any kind of, you know, product margin impact from freight rates, I mean, we're for the most part, cycled through that, given our, given our-
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, we're not really seeing a benefit right now. I know other people are. I think they got stuck, you know, in longer contracts with bad freight rates than we did.
Jack Preston (CFO)
Yeah, we were just more nimble at accessing the spot market and taking advantage of the decline in ocean freight rates that really began last June, I think, June, July. So we're - I wouldn't say there's any really that's quantifiable, or if it is, it's de minimis for Q3.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from the line of Jonathan Matuszewski of Jefferies. Your line is open.
Jonathan Matuszewski (Senior Vice President, Equity Research Analyst - Hardlines Retail)
Hey, Gary. Hey, Jack. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one was just a follow-up on RH England. You know, great to hear the demand continues to build. A while ago, Gary, you mentioned the $50-$250 range for first-year revenues was possible. Obviously, the backdrop has changed a lot, but, you know, what you've seen in the first six months and the sequential trend, how should we think about, you know, what you're internally expecting for an annualized first year of volume? And appreciate it's more about, you know, conversation than commerce, but just trying to think about how it's annualizing versus expectations. Thanks.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, you know, I don't know if we had any real expectations. You know, when people said, like, "What could it be? Could it be..." You know, I said, "I don't know. It could be $50 million, it could be $250 million." And that's, you know. I think about it as, you know, we're gonna keep kind of marketing the brand, right? To forget about RH, you know, that gallery, think about that country. You know, and, you know, what will our investments in marketing do to the direct business? What will the brand recognition do? How does it build? You know, when do you get to certain run rates? I just think it's super early for us to know, because we didn't open a typical store, right?
If we would have opened in London first, it would be massively different. You know, we opened in the countryside. We tried to do something, you know, super inspiring and something the world's never seen. And so, you know, make an investment. It's like, it's just... I wouldn't get too focused on this gallery, right? You know, try to draw a conclusion of this one, it's not gonna, it's not gonna tell us... You're not gonna get the right answer from this one, right? This is really a brand investment, and to create the right first impression and the right conversation. You know, London is gonna be coming around the corner. We're looking at other locations in other parts of England, and we're gonna be investing in marketing, right?
And not just books, but other types of marketing to drive the online business. But we're just in the early stages of all that. You know, just like I'm telling you, don't get too obsessed with RH England. From that telling us what the market's gonna be for us, I'm not too obsessed about that because it'd be the wrong place to draw conclusions from. You know, like, has anybody opened a store like that anywhere in the world, in any category? Somebody name something similar to that. Just think about that. Like, if you've seen it, if you've been there, you know, yeah, anybody on the call, you know, if you haven't, take a look at the pictures. Have you ever been to a retail store like that?...No.
So if you try to draw too many, we're not gonna really do another one like that, right? You know, so don't, you know, like, we've got other things, like, seeing how, you know, how does Germany build? That's a lot more normal. We're on streets where there's a lot of people walking by, driving by, you know, so on and so forth. It's just a different, you know, there are two different objectives and goals and visions, right? You know, and strategies for the two. They serve two different purposes. So, you know, did I think RH England, you know, like, there's a number I always had, you know, and you know, it's a modest number and we're, you know...
But, I, you know, like, what, what you don't know is, okay, when you open up a brand to an entire country like England, how does that go? How does it grow? What marketing do you have to do, you know, beyond RH England? We're still learning. So, you know, you know, we're not in a hurry to jump to any conclusions on any of this. We're really happy with the work we've done, with the team we have, you know, with the initial, you know, feedback we're getting from consumers and the kind of people that are coming, and, you know, and all that looks directionally right. So, you know, over time, it'll all take care of itself.
Jonathan Matuszewski (Senior Vice President, Equity Research Analyst - Hardlines Retail)
That's really great-
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
But, you know, yeah, yeah. Just, you know, England is its own thing. There's nothing like it in the world. That's why we did it, to get people to see something they've never seen, think of our, about our brand in a different way. You know, have people at the, you know, highest levels of, you know, the, you know, economic, you know, ladders, like, you know, who are shopping the best luxury brands in the world and stuff, look at us differently, think about us differently. You know, so they're all, they're all long-term. You know, things like that is really a long-term investment. It's like a guest house. You know, we opened what we believe is the highest quality hotel experience in New York City, if not one of the best in the world.
I'm not looking at that thing to really tell me, am I gonna roll out a lot of guest houses? No, I'm just trying to communicate differently about a brand, to build something that no one's ever built before. You know, it's like somebody just wrote a report that I thought was one of the most comprehensive reports written about our company.
Went all the way back to the very beginning, wrote about everything, wrote about RH Music, you know, when we had a record label and we're, you know, we did a concert at the Greek Theatre, and we did, you know, performances in all of our new, you know, new galleries, and we had RH Contemporary Art, and we owned The Rain Room, you know, the most exhibited art exhibit in the history of the MoMA, New York, and the history of the LACMA, New York. You know, I remember being at the Goldman conference, and, you know, someone asking me about RH Music and, you know, this and that, and like, you know, and I said, "I don't..." You know, it's just a different way of communicating.
I could go run ads digitally or in print or do anything and, you know, like, I don't know, how do you really measure those returns? If it was that easy, you know, if everybody, if everybody had really great data on digital advertising, don't you think everybody would have a really high-performing business? They don't. They don't know how much to spend. They don't know what they're getting for any of it, you know. Google and other people try to give you great things to, you know, make you spend more money. "Oh, look, look what you're gonna find out, like, they clicked on your name." Like, you don't know if they clicked on your name because they came in your store or, you know, or how they got there. You know, it's, you know, but it's just a different way of communicating and building a brand.
If you're gonna build something unlike anything anybody's ever done, you don't take the same path as them. But we got here, and we did things like RH Music, and we had 3 artists for, I don't know, 3 years, and, you know, we produced albums, and we did concerts, and we did other things. And I think people thought it was really cool, and it made our brand look different, and had people think differently about us. Like, who are those people, you know? And, you know, we did RH Contemporary Art, and we had The Rain Room. You know, first piece of art we brought, bought, became the most attended exhibit in the history of the world.
I mean, we're not always gonna get it right, but I'll tell you, anybody who's been to RH England thinks differently about RH and thinks about, "Huh, you know, those are pretty interesting people." And, you know, we're trying to build something special. It's, it's not a game plan anybody else is running because they're all running the same game plan for the most part. We're running a different one. So at different times, it's gonna be hard to look at, hard to model, hard to understand. But that's how it should be, by the way.
Jonathan Matuszewski (Senior Vice President, Equity Research Analyst - Hardlines Retail)
Great. Thanks, Gary. And then just a quick follow-up on product. A lot of discussion about disruptive pricing ahead, and just kind of curious how you're able to achieve that while preserving margins? So, you know, any color you could give us on how the materials or the finishes or the sizing of pieces in the new collections is going to be evolving would be helpful. Thanks.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, I mean, well, it's, it's just- it's because of our scale and buying power and confidence and like, if you look at, you know, you look in our Source Books or you look online and you look at the Jakob chair, for example, and if you go look at it everywhere else and look at the pricing, and then you look at our pricing, and you look at our assortment, and you look at our presentation, you know, you might have an ankle biter here or there, and someone just, you know, bought 20 chairs, and they, you know, they're not making any money, and they're gonna, you know, match our pricing. But there's, there's no one that can really buy as much as we can.
You know, there's no one that can present it, you know, on a platform as big as ours and, you know, mail as many books as we do and get behind it. And, and, you know, and a lot of people, you know, don't place the financial bets we do on product. We do that very well. That we got to where we are. So, you know, if you-- I mean, we, we've, we've got people who are selling, you know, their version of the Jakob chairs, and they pulled it off their website because their price was so embarrassing, and they already own the inventory at a much higher price, and now they don't know what to do, so they're probably sending it to an outlet. And they know who they are. They're probably listening to this call.
And, you know, if you look at anybody selling the Jakob chair, you know, whether it's the Cane Jakob chair, the Upholstered Jakob chair, the Leather Jakob chair, the dining chairs, the lounge chairs, I wouldn't want to be competing with us in that chair. And the margins are as high as anything else that we have. So it's not necessarily a lower margin when you think of disruptive pricing.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from the line of Seth Basham of Wedbush Securities. Your line is open.
Seth Basham (Managing Director, Equity Research - Hardlines Retail)
Thanks, and good afternoon. My question is also around the product transformation. Understanding there's a ton of newness and a lot going on here, but as we think about modeling it, you know, the mention that's going to be margin dilutive near term, will that switch to accretion as the sales inflect in the second quarter, or is there a longer ramp to the margin accretion?
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah. Should. It should.
Seth Basham (Managing Director, Equity Research - Hardlines Retail)
All right, that's reassuring. And then, the second question I have is just regarding the ramp in Europe. And understanding those galleries will take longer to ramp as the brand awareness is more limited than the U.S. But how should we think about the ultimate margins and ROIC of those new European galleries, putting RH England aside?
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, you know, it's not that many. You know, like we're just gonna get them open, you know, we're gonna learn a lot. We're gonna focus on how do we build our business in these different countries and what kind of marketing investments they take and what they look like. You know, it's not like you start with saying, like, "What's our ROIC gonna be in Germany?" I don't know. I've never sold anything in Germany. You know, like, what's it gonna cost to build the brand, to have people come, you know, to build up the design book and the trade book and everything else? You know, so again, it's a handful of galleries, right? It's 10.
Altogether, I think we've got 10, 9 or 10?
Seth Basham (Managing Director, Equity Research - Hardlines Retail)
10. Yeah, 10.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
10. Yeah, we do. Yeah, because we've two—Sydney and, yeah, the two in Madrid and stuff, you know. So, yeah. So, you know, we're gonna get them open, and we're gonna start learning. And we're gonna, you know, make all kinds of adjustments and get some things right and get some things wrong and work really hard to make it great. But, you know, I like how we're starting. I mean, like, we look, you know, you go into Germany, we look really good. I mean, the galleries look great, the teams are fantastic, the right people are coming in. So it's really encouraging being in Munich, you know, getting a really good feel for it. So, yeah, I mean, obviously very different than England, and, you know, so...
We didn't have to spend much capital, you know, in, in those two galleries. We, yeah, took over, you know, a couple of the Abercrombie & Fitch flagships and refitted them, and, yeah, we didn't have to build them like some of the other ones. You know, or like even in RH England, where, you know, we had to rebuild it. So, yeah, so they're, you know, they're all gonna have different kind of ROIC dynamics to them, but it's really, how does it all blend out? What does it look like, you know, year two, year three, you know, as it ramps, once you cycle some of the initial investments to get home delivery up and going and, yeah, all the investments we have to make...
But the big, the big, the real big key, you know, I'd say is, is like, is gonna be the inflection of the U.S. business. That's the key, right? That's the big thing to focus on. These things, you know, they're, they're gonna kind of take their own path, and we'll learn, and we'll make adjustments. But you know, we're getting these open. So I don't, I don't mean to minimize it. I mean, it's just... I think it's kind of unrealistic to have really specific goals for these. You know, we just want to be directionally right, and then we'll refine it and, and, you know, learn and continue to improvise and, you know, and improve everything.
But, you know, we're our big focus is to inflect, you know, the U.S. business and, you know, the North American business and, you know, get back to taking market share and, you know, getting our margins back to historical levels. And we're gonna, you know, for part of it, to get to historical levels, you know, and operating margins in the 20% range, we're gonna need the housing market to, you know, unfreeze here and kind of return to a somewhat normal housing market. And that could take another 12 months, you know? I don't know.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from the line of Peter Benedict of Baird. Your line is open.
Peter Benedict (Senior Research Analyst, Retail/Consumer Products & Services)
Oh, hey, guys, happy holidays. Yeah, follow up on that comment there, Gary. Just so, so, I was gonna ask you about the conditions you thought were required to, to get you back to that 20% operating margin. Clearly, that, you know, an unfreezing of the housing market. I was thinking more, is, is there a revenue level or scale, you know, business around $3 billion now, given, you know, the cost increases across the P&L, just, just post-pandemic? Like, what- is there a revenue level that you think is required to, to maybe support that? That was kind of my first question.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, yeah, we know that answer, but I don't, I don't know if we wanna say that right now. I mean, you know, like, I think it'll
Jack Preston (CFO)
We clearly have some amount higher than today. We've said that the margin, you know, will... Both gross margin and operating margin will naturally lever as we build back the revenue, you know, so... But we're not ready to give you that number.
Peter Benedict (Senior Research Analyst, Retail/Consumer Products & Services)
Okay, got it. No, fair enough. Then other question was just around the membership fee. We just noticed you took that up to $200. Just curious, the rationale behind that decision, that I think just happened here maybe in the last month or two. So that's my second question. Thank you.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, we just had plans to, you know, bump it up a bit. So, it's a natural progression of our business. You know, when we started membership at $100, and for years we didn't move it, but the AOV of the business had increased. And so when we first moved it to $150, you know, we talked about that we were kind of, you know, we might see a more regular cadence of increases. So I would just say this is just part of that and then reflects the sort of average order value of our business continuing to creep up. And so it's membership as a percentage of that is one way to look at. We look at.
Operator (participant)
Our last question comes from the line of Brad Thomas of KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Brad Thomas (Managing Director & Equity Research Analyst, Retail Hardlines)
Hey, thanks so much. Gary, I was hoping we could talk a little bit more about, you know, the outlook for gallery. You know, when we look at what you've done in Indianapolis and, you know, what you were working on for Miami, really pushing the boundaries here of what's going on in the U.S. I think the letter referenced 20, sorry, 40 additional markets you're looking at. I was wondering if you could just expand a little bit more on what you think the U.S. gallery network looks like 10 years from now with this continuing evolution.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
But, you know, something like Indianapolis is an opportunistic move, right? An incredible home and estate came on the market. We bought it for $14.5 million. Is that what we bought it for? Yeah.
Jack Preston (CFO)
Yeah.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, it's in our joint venture. You know, so we own 50% of it. And, you know, it's just an opportunity to get something like that for a $14.5 million investment. And, you know, what we put into it was, you know, pretty minimal versus what our normal investment was. So we have this incredible experience for the customers, you know, at a lower investment rate than we'd make, you know, and a lower occupancy cost than we would expect to have. So, you know, that was just a, you know, that's kind of a one-off great outcome. I mean, we're always looking for things like that to come up, but I wouldn't say that's like you're out looking.
You know, you're not really looking for something like that. Like, they just kind of happen. So, you know, I think, you know, that's just an opportunistic move. But what, you know, what does it look like 10 years from now?
Jack Preston (CFO)
We have 35 legacy galleries. You know, we'll have, you know, more and more of those converted.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah.
Jack Preston (CFO)
We'll also go back to the existing design galleries. We've talked about certain ones that are gonna... You have the next iteration, like a Houston, for example, will have a big gallery. Los Angeles, at some point-
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah.
Jack Preston (CFO)
Again, for example. That in North America will continue. And the 40, you know, Gary talks about the design markets of the 40 and the logic there. So that's a whole kind of different animal, I guess, in terms of adding to the store base.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, and we may learn in some of these, you know, smaller kind of what we, you know, refer to as the design studios. Really, in Palm Desert, it's like a design office, right? It's really enabling entrepreneurs, you know, interior designers that maybe don't wanna work in a retail gallery. And, you know, where there's market opportunities to do something to improve our... and have a more dominant interior design presence, we think that's really good for the RH brand. You know, so some of these will look a lot less like a small store.
They'll look a lot more like an interior design office with, you know, a couple of, you know, small presentations to the product, but really a real office for an interior designer to work with clients in a, you know, highly professional way and attract, you know, entrepreneurial people that wanna run their own interior design business. We become a platform that can support them and allow them to do what they really want to do. Yeah, so we may, you know, for example, like in the first one that we've got in Palm Desert, how big is that? It's, like, 3,000 sq ft, something like that.
Jack Preston (CFO)
Yeah.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, it's, like, 3,000 feet. We're also looking to probably do a 10-20,000 sq ft gallery there, probably 15-25,000, call the range, you know, in that market. And, you know, we'll have both of those locations. One's really a true interior design office, but that gallery that we'll build, you know, probably won't have the same dedicated space for interior design that we might have in one of our big galleries, where we have interior design embedded into the gallery. So, you know, just gives us more flexibility, reach more markets, activate the interior design business, which is a growing part of what we do. And I think we're gonna learn a lot of these, where there's opportunities for even bigger stores.
Like, if we're right on this transformation, that we're, you know, kind of, you know, have begun here, and we're right around about how the business is gonna inflect, you know, that's just gonna meaningfully take up your volumes in all these markets, makes all the occupancy models look different, right? And allows you to access different things and invest in different ways. So, you know, we're gonna... I'm sure we're gonna have an even new, a new view in the second half of next year. You know, as our baseline performance improves, it, you know, it changes your economic outlook from a real estate point of view.
Brad Thomas (Managing Director & Equity Research Analyst, Retail Hardlines)
That's great. Thank you, Gary.
Operator (participant)
There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Gary Friedman, Chairman and CEO, for closing remarks.
Gary G. Friedman (Chairman and CEO)
Great. Well, thank you everyone. We appreciate your interest, you know, we wish you all a happy holiday, and I would say to, you know, Team RH, we just can't tell you how much we appreciate, you know, the energy and, and the, you know, commitment and passion you bring to our business and to our brand. You know, you, you are, you know, the heart and soul of this, of this company. You are the ones that, you know, interface with our consumers every day, and thank you for making us so proud, and, and especially the teams that just brought our international galleries to life. I mean, just incredible.
You know, what we've done, you know, we were in Germany, what, just 2 weeks ago or 10 days ago, and you walk in, you interface with the people, you look at the gallery, you'd think it was in North America. You know, I mean, and to be, you know, at the very beginning of this and to be executing at that level, and to have that quality of people and, you know, that energy in the galleries was just... Gives me and the team here a great deal of confidence of what we can do globally with this brand.
So we wish everyone a wonderful and happy holiday and, you know, wish for, you know, peace in the Middle East and, you know, and hopefully this world becomes a more peaceful place very soon. So happy holidays, everyone.
Operator (participant)
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.