Mid-Summer Sales and Operations Update
As we move into the peak summer season, we continue to see strong visitation in many parks where EN stores are open, especially rural, seashore, hiking, and outdoor destinations. The increased visitation is directly impacting sales across the organization.
Over the past three months our sales have exceeded our initial projections and we now consider this a sustained increase that will last throughout the year. We are no longer comparing our sales to projections and are now comparing to 2019. Sales from November through May are down 43% compared to 2019, however, sales for May were down only 32%. We continue to make progress as more stores reopen and visitation increases.
We currently have retail operations in 102 of the 170 units of the National Park Service that we serve. We are awaiting reopening dates for most of the 68 units that currently have no stores open.
Two of our highest priorities today are recruiting and sourcing inventory. The current national labor shortage has slowed down our ability to fill positions, especially at stores. Our Human Resource team has been working hard to create innovative solutions to address this issue and we are seeing early successes from their hard work. Our Merchandise team is working closely with vendors to source inventory as the world continues to adjust to meet the demands of shoppers. We anticipate recruiting and acquiring inventory will require creative solutions well into 2022.