Lands' End, Dodgeville, WI, announced March 12 that it had posted double-digit increases in both sales and earnings in fiscal 1997 ended Jan. 30. Sales growth was attributed to the company's specialty businesses, its core monthly and prospecting catalogs and its foreign-based operations. Net sales rose 13 percent to $1.3 billion from $1.1 billion for the same period the prior year. Excluding from both years sales from The Territory Ahead, which the company owned for all of 1997 and sold last month, net sales rose 15.6 percent. Net income for the year rose 25.9 percent to $64.2 million from $51 million for fiscal 1996. The fourth quarter kept pace with the rest of the year, with net sales rising 13.5 percent to $480 million from $423 million for the fourth-quarter 1996 and net income rising 10.2 percent to $41.3 million from $37.4 million the previous year.
