Old Navy Sales Double Rival

Sales at the Old Navy store that opened Aug. 1 in Fayetteville’s Spring Creek Centre have been “going through the roof,” said Michael Wade, the store’s manager.

Wade said August sales at the Fayetteville store were double that of its “comparison store” within the company. The Old Navy in Louisville, Ky., was chosen as Fayetteville’s rival store because it’s an identical, 25,000-SF store in a college town (although Louisville, with a population of 270,000, is about five times larger than Fayetteville).

The Kentucky store, however, has been open for almost three years, so Wade concedes that part of the boost in sales at the Fayetteville store is because it’s new to the area.

Wade, who previously served as operations manager for Old Navy in North Little Rock’s McCain Mall, said he couldn’t give specific numbers regarding sales, but said, “It’s going much better than expected.”

The Fayetteville store has 115 employees. All but 10 of them part time.

Old Navy is a division of Gap Inc. of San Francisco.

The decision to open the Old Navy store apparently comes in the wake of impressive sales figures at the Gap that opened in June 1998 in the Northwest Arkansas Mall.

Gap Inc. had 3,284 stores as of July — 1,885 Gap Domestic, 454 Gap International, 365 Banana Republic and 580 Old Navy. Old Navy targets lower and middle-income shoppers.

In fiscal 1999, Gap Inc. had $11.6 billion in sales, up 29 percent over $9 billion the year before. The company had second quarter 2000 sales of $2.95 billion, up from $2.45 billion for the same period of 1999.