Kits Eyecare Ltd.

Good morning and welcome to the KITS iCare first quarter 2024 financial results conference call. This call is being recorded and available later today for replay. Your hosts today are Roger Hardy, Chief Executive Officer, Joseph Thompson, Chief Operating Officer, and Z. Chu, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'm required to provide the following statement respecting forward-looking information, which is made on behalf of KITS and all of its representatives on this call. Certain statements made on this call will contain forward-looking information. These forward-looking statements generally can be identified by The use of words such as intend, believe, could, expect, estimate, forecast, may, would, and other words of similar meaning. This forward-looking information is based on management's opinions, estimates, and assumptions in light of their experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions, and expected future developments, as well as factors that they currently believe are appropriate and reasonable in the circumstances. Actual results could differ materially from a conclusion, forecast, expectation, belief or projection in the forward-looking information. Certain material factors and assumptions were applied in drawing a conclusion or making a forecast or projection as reflected in the forward-looking information. Management cautions investors not to rely on forward-looking information. Additional information about the material factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the conclusion, forecast or projection in the forward-looking information and material factors or assumptions that were applied in drawing a conclusion or making a forecast or projection as reflected in the forward-looking information are contained in KITS filings with Canadian Provincial Security Regulators. During today's call, all figures are Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Roger Hardy. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'd like to start out today by thanking the entire KITS team for delivering a record quarter for shareholders, stakeholders, and customers. As we have grown, our company culture continues to become more focused on execution. It's been great to watch this team evolve and flourish this quarter, as well as see the achievements of our work. There's nothing as exciting to me as watching our KITS business compound its growth as we did again this quarter. We have a large, loyal community of existing customers who return to KITS time and time again because we consistently deliver high-quality products. In addition to this healthy annuity, we continue to organically expand our network each quarter in meaningful ways, and it's having a compounding effect on our scale and the markets we serve. This has made even more exciting because KITS exists in a large legacy $80 billion category where incumbents deliver marginal service levels and still remain largely undisrupted. There's incredible opportunity to grow KITS in the coming quarters and years. When we architected KITS, we built it specifically with this opportunity in mind. As our team continues to innovate and our technology continues to improve, we recognize the opportunity in front of us to take meaningful share from incumbents as well as grow the overall market. During our last call, I provided expectations for Q1 of 22% to 26% year-over-year revenue growth and hitting positive adjusted EBITDA. I'm pleased to report that we delivered revenue growth at the top end of the range, meeting management's expectations with Q1 quarterly revenues of nearly $35 million, which equates to 26% organic growth and an annual run rate just shy of $140 million. This record quarterly growth was driven by two factors. First, the compounding of our annuity-like returning customers who continue to return at a record rate across both our contact lens business and our eyeglass business. And secondly, the efficiency with which we are acquiring new customers in this category. We had tremendous organic growth this quarter with our U.S. business growing 20% and our Canadian business growing over 40%. We also saw great growth across both our key segments where our stable annuity contact lens business grew 25% and our eyeglasses business grew 36%. We are pleased with the record $30 million contact lens quarter, but even more impressive to me is the traction we are seeing in our eyeglasses segment, which was our fastest growing segment in the quarter. In perhaps a watershed moment, the most impressive statistic in our business's quarter is that more than 1 million people tried on eyeglasses using our virtual try-on tool, which I consider a leading indicator with regards to future purchase intent. We believe this makes us one of the largest optical stores in the world and by far one of the most heavily foot trafficked in optical globally, a stat that would be hard for anyone in the category to ignore. We're starting to see interesting network effects of influencers and advocates sharing broadly their experiences with kids on TikTok and other social media platforms. One such poster who was unpaid by kids generated more than 250,000 likes for her referral to kids. We have no doubt that we have created an economic engine that offers a better solution in this category than anything else in the market and that we have built this engine and business to scale. We also remain confident that this will be very difficult for others to replicate or even compete with given their legacy infrastructure and cost base. There is no doubt in my mind that this glasses offering will continue to compound and exceed $100 million healthy business within the next three to five years as more and more customers turn to the benefits of buying the kits. In Canada, we are seeing huge demand for our business, where we are the fastest growing profitable eye care provider in the country. Our value proposition is cutting through the substantial noise as we acquire new customers with confidence and at will, as others have been suffering with weak revenues or growing losses. And we've achieved this growth all with reduced marketing expense as a percent of sales. This quarter, we experienced declining competition across many areas of our business, where we saw competitors withdraw from situations where the cost structure simply could not rival some with our lower cost direct distribution model. We also saw improving organic growth in our glasses and contact lens segments. What makes us all the more impressive is that this record growth was achieved with a declining spend in marketing as a percent of sales. We believe this gives us a strong indication that our value proposition is resonating with consumers and that the power of our brand is generating increasing momentum, which we saw across many metrics in the business this quarter, as Joe and Zee will discuss. It's always important when expanding a fast-growing business like ours to maintain tight fiscal discipline, and I'm pleased to report that's exactly what the team did throughout the quarter. While we made some intentional moves to generate more new customer growth that slightly impacted gross margins, we controlled our operating expenses nicely and improved the overall long-term profitability profile of the business. Accordingly, the marketing team delivered solid execution with declining spend, as marketing expense as a percent of sales declined in the quarter from 14.5% to 13% of revenues. We were also successful in improving leverage and decreasing fulfillment expenses of percent of sales, declined to 11.9% of revenues from 12.5% of revenues in 2023. Our two-year active customer count grew to over 870,000. This growth is a testament to the effectiveness of our offering and our relentless focus on meeting the needs of our diverse customer base. In addition, we generated over 64% of our revenue from our loyal core customer. This continued support not only reflects their strong affinity for our brand, but also ensures a steady stream of revenue contributing to our financial resilience. We also added 74,000 new customers during the first quarter. This influx of new customers has significantly contributed to our record-breaking top-line results, setting a promising trajectory for the rest of the fiscal year. Our strategy yielded remarkable results, and the response from both new and returning customers has been overwhelmingly positive. Glass's revenue increased by 36% year-over-year, reaching $4.6 million, as we delivered a total of 75,000 units of glasses, 33,000 of which were delivered to new customers. Remaining steadfast in our mission to streamline eye care and provide high-quality, accessible solutions, we continue to witness a resounding positive response from new and returning customers. As we move further into 2024, our expectations are that growth will continue at a compounding rate. Accordingly, we expect to see revenues of approximately $36 to $38 million and targeting 3% to 5% adjusted EBITDA margins for Q2 2024. Overall, we have built a company that's nearly impossible to replicate with many strategic advantages over traditional brick and mortar providers, including the quality, price, and delivery speed of our products, our best-in-class experience, our onshore manufacturing lab, and our compounding annuity-like base of returning customers. We've created this industry-leading platform with our own cash flow and minimal debt, that is set up to serve an annual revenue run rate of at least $250 million without any additional CapEx investments. Today, we are routinely serving thousands of patients and generating more than a half a million dollars a day of sales and delivering from our state-of-the-art facility without missing a beat. It's my wholehearted belief that we'll soon be delivering over a million dollars a day from this facility, also not missing a beat. We're incredibly well positioned to deliver outsized value over the long run to our customers, employees, and shareholders. On behalf of the entire KITS team, we look forward to updating shareholders on our progress as we strive to achieve our long-term growth targets for the business. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Joe to dive more detail on the operational performance. Joe?

Thanks, Roger. Our growth continues to take shape, and as it does, we remain focused on operational cost discipline, while adding to our active vision corrected customer base and consistently improving service levels. Operational cost discipline was a highlight in Q1 as we saw 220 basis points of cost improvement versus Q1 2023 across marketing, fulfillment, and G&A. Leading the way was marketing expense, which was reduced by 150 basis points year-on-year to 13% of revenue in Q1. For us, maintaining marketing spend in the 12% to 14% of revenue range while continuing to grow new customers will ensure that growth is coming from word of mouth and strong customer experience, insulating us from our reliance on expensive paid channels. A particular highlight in the quarter was our influencer channel, which was our fastest growing marketing channel in Q1, while registering the lowest cost of acquisition, a powerful combo. The team believes it's still day one for kits in this channel and anticipates that in Q2, influencers could become our biggest marketing channel overall. Fulfillment also saw leverage as greater scale in our lab brought savings in manufacturing and shipping. In Q1, we also made meaningful progress adding customers in premium categories within Optical, including digital progressive customers as well as those looking for premium lens upgrades. In contact lenses, this includes daily modality contact lenses. These customers have a higher optical spend per year and come back more frequently. We've also found that premium category customers appreciate the significant savings and convenience Kits offers and historically retain at a higher rate. In Q1, this led to a growth in average order value in both eyeglasses and contact lenses of 16%. Growth in revenue per customer per year, up 18% in Q1. led by eyeglasses, and growth in progressives and premium lens upgrades with revenue up 55% year-on-year. Importantly, adding these premium cohort optical customers did not burden marketing spend, which decreased the percentage of revenue year-on-year. Finally, we continued to improve service levels to patients each and every quarter. This starts with a high-quality selection of the latest styles. In Q1, we added 384 new unique Kits frame styles, including our Titanium, Rimless, Liftoff, and Habitall collections, to end the quarter at over 2,100 total styles and 305,000 frames in stock. Importantly, our operations team did not miss a beat with higher order volumes, and the majority of single vision Prescription glasses were manufactured and shipped the same day the order was received. Our same-day service in Vancouver expanded. The team added Saturday delivery to key metro areas in Canada, and our next-day and two-day delivery experience continues to roll out throughout North America. Expect more of the same from the kids' team in 2024. We're built for scale, and we're just getting started. I'll now turn the call over to our newly appointed CFO, V. Chu, for an overview of our first quarter financial results.

Thanks, Joe. It's a pleasure to be joining you all on my first quarterly conference call. For those that don't know me, I've served as the Senior Vice President of Finance for KIT since August 2020 and have been deeply ingrained in the finance and accounting function as we've grown the business over the years. I'm incredibly excited about the opportunity at hand and I look forward to working in tandem with the rest of our executive team as we guide kids to new heights in 2024 and beyond. In fact, we're a great start to 2024 with another quarter of record financial performance. So let's jump into our first quarter results. Revenue in first quarter increased 26% to $34.8 million compared to $27.7 million in the prior year period. The increase was primarily attributed with strong repeat customer revenue in both contact lens and eyeglasses, higher average order value, and a growth in repeat eyeglasses customers. Gross profit in first quarter increased 22% to $11.2 million compared to $9.1 million in the prior year period, while gross margin slightly decreased to 32.1% compared to 33% in the prior year period. As Roger and Joe have talked at length, we prioritized new customer growth despite its tendency for a lower gross margin. This was strategic decisions to grow our repeat customer base, which becomes margin-accretive on additional orders moving forward. We anticipate a stabilization and eventual improvement in gross margins throughout 2024 as these new customers begin contributing to repeat purchases. Net income improved to $0.1 million or $0.0 per diluted share compared to a net loss of $1 million or negative $0.03 per share in the first quarter of 2023. EBITDA improved to $1.2 million compared to negative $0.05 million in the prior year period and we generated positive adjusted EBITDA of $0.6 million compared to $0.3 million in the prior year period. The bottom line improvement was primarily attributed to the increase in revenue and gross profit along with an improved leverage in fulfillment and marketing expense during the period. We continue to prioritize delivering profitability as we generate the best returns on every order delivered to our customers. We ended the quarter with a cash balance of $18.4 million compared to $60 million at December 31, 2023, with minimum debt on the balance sheet. We worked through the investment in inventory last quarter and generated $4.1 million of positive free cash flow from operations in Q1. We expect our cash flow to continue to grow incrementally for the balance of the period. Overall, our balance sheet remains strong, and we expect to continue to leverage on our operating expenses as we move through 2024. I'll now turn the floor over to questions. Operator?

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star, fold by one. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star, fold by two. If you're using a handset, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. Your first question comes from Luke Hannon from Canaccord Genuity. Luke, please go ahead.

Thanks and good morning, everyone. I wanted to start by asking about what you're doing in the Influencer Channel. Joe, you mentioned that was the fastest growing marketing channel for you in Q1. It's doing very well in terms of ROI as well, and then Q2, that could be the bigger channel for you overall. I'm just curious, what's the strategy there right now? Is it mostly micro-influencers? Do you see yourself going up the chain, if you will, and targeting influencers that might have a broader audience from here? How is that strategy going to evolve as we think about Q2 and beyond?

Well, good morning, Luke. Thanks for your question and always happy to talk about our influencer channel. You know, one thing that we have seen in the last couple quarters is influencers have been the highest growth area with the lowest cost per acquisitions. We tend to like channels where you really have to work to find the right fit, the right partners, and then learn and iterate rapidly within the channel. And that's what we've seen over the course. This has been work that's been done over the past year, year and a half, building these partnerships. And you're right, they did start in micro-influencers and continue to expand in micro-influencers and have been moving up the chain. So overall highest growth in influencers and the lowest cost per acquisition, which we think is a great combo, and expect us to do much more. We think this category lends itself very well to influencers as well. It's a very topical category. Almost 8 out of 10 adults require corrective optical in either eyeglasses or contact lenses. So it's definitely a category that's relevant for all. You know, we've also had success in micro-influencers and local market activations as we've done city-by-city takeovers. So, very excited with the momentum the team has and excited for more there.

It's great to hear. And then for my follow-up here, I did want to ask about the gross margin question. The build for the balance of the year, should we think about, as we move into Q2 here, you did provide the EBITDA margin guidance, which is very helpful. I imagine the right way to think about that would be gross margin. We might get some slight expansion, maybe flattish compared to where it is in Q1, and probably more expansion in the back part of the year. And really what's going to be driving the EBITDA margin expansion quarter on quarter will just be scaling of revenue. I guess the question is how specifically, when we think about the cadence of gross margin quarter on quarter for the balance of the year, what's the right way to think about that cadence?

Sure, Luke. And I think you've got a number of great points in there. So on an annualized basis, we have seen a lot of improvement in the last year on both gross margin percentage and EBITDA. And we feel those improvements are durable. Those improvements will sustain. There's no change to our belief that we're building a 40 plus percent gross margin business leading to a 10 percent plus in EBITDA. And that was reinforced with our outlook in Q2 of EBITDA in the 3 to 5 percent range while continuing to grow it at industry leading rates. I think you're right in that the expansion in EBITDA will come from from continued scale on revenue and continued leverage on the operating lines. And we'll see that continue to build as it has over the last couple of quarters. I think each quarter is a little unique. And in Q1, we invested and made meaningful progress in adding optical customers in premium categories, which reduced a gross margin percentage on their first order but was offset by a reduction in marketing spend. And so we're excited to continue to expand EBITDA and continue on this march to 40-plus percent gross margin business in the quarters and years ahead.

Okay. Thank you very much. Your next question comes from Martin Landry from Steeple.

Martin, please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, everyone. I would like to touch on your strategy for customer acquisition. During the quarter, you say that you offered targeted promotions. I believe it's to attract new customers. So can you tell us how successful were those promotions? How many new customers did you add in Q1?

Sure thing, Martin. Great to talk to you this morning. Thanks for the question. So we added about 74,000 new customers in the quarter, which was an increase and continued to build to our two-year active customer base, which totaled 870,000 in Q1, the end of Q1. I think maybe a couple things that we would touch on that are driving some of that success. Number one, we touched on the influencer channel in particular. And so, again, we'll just reinforce this just continues to be a very productive channel for us, influencers and affiliates, the highest growth, the lowest cost per acquisition. In addition, we've also had success in some local market activations. And we kind of call them city-by-city takeovers, where you can concentrate marketing spend in a very focused, very efficient way. and build the beginning of a brand movement in a community. Really kind of light the spark and go city by city and then rapidly iterate and then go on to the next city. And so we've had, the team's done a great job testing that concept out in the Vancouver market with great results. You know, and we see in the coming years, you know, 15 to 20 core metro areas where we can expand that approach out to that are very efficient and have been successful yielding new customers. I guess lastly, we'd probably just say, you know, we're always looking for the most efficient vehicle to spread the word. And then we'd rather give the equivalent of those marketing dollars to customers in the form of greater value and service. You know, ultimately, In the industry, sometimes there's a tendency to lean immediately towards Facebook and Instagram. And what we found is our customers are our best advocates. And so in the short term, we'd like to continue to remain at 12% to 14% marketing as a percentage of revenue while we grow at industry-leading levels. And then longer term, we even see that percentage coming down further.

Okay, that's helpful. Just to put in context, 74,000 new customers this quarter, how does that compare to Q4?

New customer growth, yes, sure, we can pull that up, Martin. New customer growth from Q4, we don't have that immediately in front of us, but we'll pull that in the next couple of seconds here.

It was an increase. I was just trying to understand sequentially there's a drop of 300 basis point in your gross margin. So I was just trying to understand a little bit how much was related to that strategy.

Yeah, Martin, I think just to expand on what Joe said, and I think he did a good job of giving an overview, but let me drill down a little. So I think he touched on the growth of Canada specifically, that 40% growth. there being some incentives in terms of purchase and in terms of acquiring new customers. We did experience a little seasonality from a gross margin perspective. The seasonality, in a sense, has been driven by some of the incentives associated with purchases from vendors and the like. In the case of Q1, if I look at a normalized Q1 for last year versus normalized gross margin Q1 this year, they're essentially flat. There's a little bit of noise in terms of purchase incentives. And in the case of Q1 this year, we haven't finalized some of those agreements. So I think we'll see a lift in gross margin in Q2 as we finalize some of those incentive agreements. But there is a little bit of kind of vendor rebate and those type of incentives that vendors get that's not factored into this queue. So just worth noting that on a normalized view, we're actually up, I think, a couple of basis points over last year.

And Martin, just to close the circle here, we had 69,000 new customers in Q4 2023, so So we were happy with the growth in new customers up to 74,000 Q1.

So slight uptick, and more importantly, probably the balance of the mix that are more heavily focused in Canada, and as I said, some purchase incentive there. Thank you. Does that make a little more sense, Marte?

Yeah, no, for sure. I just want to switch gears. In the opening remarks, Roger, I think you've talked about revenue hitting $36 to $38 million and EBITDA margins of 3% to 5%. Was this your expectations for Q4? Did I hear correctly?

No, that was my expectations for Q2.

Q2, okay. Okay, wow. Yeah. Okay.

We're finishing Q1, and that would be the expectation for Q2 2024. Yeah, I mean, you can probably hear we've got a lot of, you know, we're not quite halfway through the quarter with a lot of momentum. So I guess that gives us a sense it's a strong spring. You know, like I said, I think the value, the proposition is really cutting through. This kind of success on a, you know, declining marketing spend as a percent of revenue, this kind of momentum, you know, I think we've talked about trying to focus on the quality of the product, on the speed of the delivery, and on the selection that we're offering customers. And those three things are really resonating and breaking through. So it's being reflected in terms of new customer traction as well as returning customer strength.

Great to hear. Okay, that's it for me. Thank you.

Thanks, Marcia. Your next question comes from John Luca Tucci from Heywood Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, guys, and congrats on a great quarter. Just following up on the marketing angle, I'm just wondering if your outlook or your perspective on marketing spend as a percentage of revenue has changed over the last few months as you seem to really be hitting your stride. Are you able to spend less and yield more going forward? Just curious on your thoughts.

Well, good morning, John Luca, to you and to the whole Haywood team. You know, we definitely have seen that occur in Q1 where our yields went up in Q1 and our marketing expense went down to 13%. leveraging about 150 basis points year-on-year. I think moving forward throughout that balance of 2024, we would like to keep marketing in that 12% to 14% of revenue range. And longer term, we see that percentage coming down further.

Okay.

Appreciate it, Joe.

And just curious, it seems like the first half of the year is going to be quite strong, robust. I'm just wondering how should we be thinking about the back half of the year? I think your annual target of 20% to 30%, has that changed at all at this point? Or just wondering how should we be positioning for the second half?

Yeah, John, look, I think, you know, we – We're just a couple months from our last call where we had said we'd be comfortable in the 20% to 30% range of revenue for the year. And that remains our focus. We have seen, as Roger pointed out, really strong growth this year in Q1, and it has continued in Q2. And so we're very happy about that. And as we look at the broader industry, We see the industry, you know, it's a great industry, it continues to grow, but in the 3% to 5% range at the highest level. So we're, you know, so far this year growing about five times the rate of the industry. But, you know, we're going to keep our heads down, as you've seen us do, and continue to deliver value for customers. And so we were happy to share. A little bit more about our outlook for Q2, $36 to $38 million in revenue and about 3% to 5% in EBITDA. And we'll look forward to updating you in another couple months on how we see the balance of the year. But no change for now.

Okay. Thanks, Joseph. Congrats on the quarter and talk soon. Thanks, John. Thanks, Jeffrey.

Your next question comes from Matt Caranda from Roth MKM. Matt, please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Good morning. Just wanted to cover the Glasses AUR in a little bit more detail. It was up pretty nicely year over year, I guess, despite investing in some new customer growth, which I think historically has come maybe at lower AURs. So just wondering if you could unpack the dynamics that are playing out here with Glasses in terms of AUR on repeat customers versus sort of the new customers that you're acquiring?

Yeah, good morning, Matt. Thanks for the question. So, yeah, we did see average order value up on glasses 22%. in the quarter. A lot of that, you know, we're happy to continue to offer category-leading value. A lot of this is coming as we onboard premium customers into the category. Premium lens upgrades, digital progressive customers, those were up 55% in Q1 versus a year ago on a strong base. And repeat customers are the other driver. This category really works when customers come back and that's a behavior that we've seen consistently on our contact lens business and we are now really seeing on our glasses business. Not only do they come back, but they're often coming back and making upgrades and making multiple purchases as they do. So that's been driving a lot of the average order value growth in Q1, and that's something we expect to continue through 2024. Okay, that's helpful.

And then the $36 to $38 million top line for the second quarter that you highlighted, still very nice growth. I guess we're coming up against some pretty big comparisons, especially in context. Does that imply that we should see glasses growth accelerate from the first quarter rate of growth that you saw? Just wanted to see if you could maybe touch on sort of context versus glasses for the second quarter or at least just roughly for the remainder of the year.

Yeah, thanks, Matt. We probably won't get too into Too much details on on breaking those components out, I think, overall, you know continuing to see growth around into Q2 around five times and above the rate of the industry and in Q1 glasses plus 36% leading the way with 75,000 units 33,000 new so. So, you know, we're probably continuing to be bullish on our eyeglasses business. And maybe while I won't break out, you know, quarter by quarter specific, I think we are very confident that we'll continue to see growth in glasses throughout 2024. And you heard Roger touch on this. this $100 million Glasses run rate business over the next three to five years. And that's really reinforced by, one, our continued growth in average order value, the Glasses customer repeat profile, which has really been exciting, and then a lot of the traffic and exploration growth that we're seeing on the site. Over 1.3 million frames virtually tried on on our site in the quarter. was really fantastic. People are investigating and enjoying the experience they have on trying on new frames, showing them to friends, finding that perfect fit guarantee that we have, hearing about us from influencers, and just really exploring. And so those are the things that just give us confidence that this is going to be a $100 million run rate glasses business in the years ahead. We're not going to get too specific on what that growth number is going to be quarter on quarter in the next couple quarters, but it just continues to tick upwards.

Okay, fair enough. Maybe just last one. On the glasses repeaters, just curious, sort of all things being equal, those customers that you acquired this last quarter and the first quarter, When would you expect them to come back, I guess? Maybe just talk about the cadence of repeat behavior that you typically see. Has that changed in any way in the last year or two? Maybe just touch on ways that we can accelerate that repeat cycle.

Sure. It has changed. And while I won't get into the exact numbers, I think broadly we talk about some trends on this call. In the industry, we see eyeglasses repeat every 18 to 24 months. And that's really driven by the insurance industry, which tends to fund about $300 every two years to insurance-supported customers. And in a remarkable coincidence, in the industry, glasses then tend to cost $300. And so customers can buy one pair. every two years. And so we set a higher bar for repeat than the industry. And we tend to look at a repeating glasses customer within a 12-month window. So a customer comes, has category-leading value, service, has a great experience with the quality of the product, and still has money to spend in their insurance premium. It's our expectation that customer is going to come back and be interested in maybe a pair of prescription sunglasses or, you know, that red pair of prescription glasses that they've always wanted but just couldn't justify with the price at historical levels in the industry at greater than $300. So, You know, so we set the target repeat under 12 months, and in a lot of cases, we're seeing repeat under six months. And we don't break out the specifics, but to your question, the trends have been improving quarter on quarter, year on year.

Okay, great. I'll take the rest of mine offline. Thanks, guys. Your next question comes from Jason Vanberg from Bentham. Jason, please go ahead.

Hi, and thanks for taking my questions. First, I just wanted to touch on, you highlight the virtual try-on in your press release. I just wanted to sort of understand, obviously, I can see or talk about a correlation between using this virtual try-on tool and purchasing, but I just wanted to find out if we can get any more specific details in terms of What's the more likelihood of somebody buying using the tool, or is it a factor of less returns for those that use this try-on tool? I just wanted to see sort of what the strength is in terms of this online tool and purchasing behavior.

Yeah, good morning, Jason, and thanks for the question on virtual try-on. So maybe a couple things to cover there. Number one, what excites us the most about the growth in virtual try-on is as customers are exploring on the site, they're discovering more of our selection. So, you know, the average brick-and-mortar retail store has selection, you know, in around, you know, 150 to 300 frames in the total store. And in just this last quarter, Kits added an incremental 384 styles. just on kits, just in this quarter. And so it's a great, the virtual try-on tool is just a great way for customers to very quickly virtually try on a number of different frames and find the one that's right for them, pointing to the perfect fit guarantee. So the benefits for us are exploring more of our selection to find what's right for them. And then as they return for a second purchase, they can zero in even faster on what that right selection is. And then as we find the perfect fit for each and every customer with over 2,100 different styles of eyeglasses on the site, to your point, we are seeing a lower return profile for those customers. So all indications are positive on that Trion tool, and you can expect, given this success, us to continue to invest in more online vision tools for customers.

And I think, Jason, just to add to what Joe said from maybe the other side of the opportunity, at this point, we probably have what we consider a fairly low conversion on a million plus try-ons, but therein lies the opportunity to even slightly impact or affect those conversions will have a meaningful impact on our business. When we look at the The cost of try-on today, you know, we haven't estimated how many stores it would take, physical store, retail locations, to generate a million glasses try-ons, but our expectation is that it's fairly significant and probably would be one of the largest optical chains in optical. So it's really quite interesting to see this many people trying on, the opportunity for us to convert more over time, the opportunity for us to understand lead generation for us to understand where there's demand, which styles are in demand, which styles in terms of getting ahead of trends and forecasting. It really puts us on the bleeding edge of a number of important touch points for our consumers. So, you know, it's just a really, really interesting opportunity that we have that we think is quite unique and why we thought it was worth pulling out. I guess the last point to touch on is People are trying these glasses on, you know, on the commute to work. They're doing it from home, from office, from, you know, anywhere they want to be and wherever it's convenient for them. So I think that's a big key part of this as well. It's just serving customers wherever they want to be. And it's, yeah, hopefully that gives you an overview, Jason. Thanks.

Yeah, that's great comment. My second question, just you could, provide any color on the competitive landscape, whether it be your Canadian marketplace or in the U.S. market? Has there been any change or any opportunity in that competitive environment?

Sure, Jason. As we think about Q1, there was certainly more promotional intensity in Q4 2023, where this dynamic of Black Friday, Cyber Monday has almost kind of become an entire season unto itself. But really what we're seeing, and you heard it in Roger's remarks, we're outside of these expected promotional periods. We've seen less promotional intensity, and that's really been the case, and Q1 has continued in Q2. For many in the industry, as this category moves online at an increasing level, it's a challenge if you have a big network of brick-and-mortar overhead, and it's a challenge if you outsource designer manufacturing or have a big head office. So for us, our heads are down. We're focused on providing category-leading value and greater selection every quarter and the highest quality with delivering one to two days. And as we do, we find it's more and more difficult for the legacy industry to compete with that. And that's definitely been what we've seen play out so far in 2024.

Yeah, and I probably just, you know, from my perspective, I mean, we spend most of the time here thinking about delivering quality, delivering selection, delivering speed to customers. I think, you know, I can't actually say accurately whether others, you know, what their marketing budgets are or spend, so that's not really our focus. What I can say is that what we're offering is elevating above the noise, above the what others are doing. Our value proposition is cutting through the quality, the selection, you know, and our delivery is cutting through the noise. And so that's why we see, you know, I think that's why we see a more efficient yield on our marketing spend in quotes. I think that, you know, others, if their offering is weak or we'll have to spend more And over time, they'll, you know, be inclined to spend less or not really compete or try to compete with us. And so I think that's kind of what we've seen. We did mention a couple, you know, to us, it's become clear that there's a few people falling out of the sort of lead peloton and they, you know, there will probably be others that continue to fall away and our model really is just getting started. There's a lot of opportunity, and so we're happy to see the progress in the quarter.

That's great. Thanks very much. There are no further questions at this time. I'll turn it back to Roger for closing remarks.

Great, thanks operator and thanks everybody for joining today. Thanks to all our stakeholders that continue to support our business quarter after quarter. I strongly believe that we've created the best platform in the optical industry and are nearing escape velocity as we move into this next growth phase. We have an exceptionally talented team across our organization that is highly aligned on our long-term vision for the company and I look forward to continue leading KITS to new heights. 2024 looks to be another record year and we remain committed as ever to execute our profitable growth initiatives and delivering shareholder value. Thanks again for joining us today. Have a great day, and go Canucks, go.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.