COLMAR, Pa. – Dorman Products has announced sales for the first quarter ended March 28, 2015, of $188.5 million, an increase of 3 percent from $183.5 million in the first quarter of 2014. Diluted earnings per share for the first quarter decreased 6 percent to 60 cents per share from 64 cents per share in 2014.

“Sales growth for the quarter was a modest 3 percent primarily as a result of exceptionally strong growth in the first quarter of 2014 and the continued negative impact of an inventory reduction program at one large customer. Despite these challenges, we achieved a two-year stacked sales growth rate of 22 percent,” said Steven Berman, chairman and CEO. “Sell-through rates of our products in the quarter, despite several weeks in February that were negatively impacted by extreme weather, remain encouraging. We would like to thank our customers and end-users for their continued support.

“We continue to work toward completion of the stabilization and transition phase of our ERP conversion,” Berman added. “The incremental costs associated with the post go-live ERP transition declined significantly in the quarter, but were higher than expected. To ensure our customer demands were met during this period, we intentionally increased our distribution costs. The increased distribution costs are expected to decline over the next three to six months before stabilizing. We expect to offset the remaining incremental costs gradually through improved efficiencies beginning later this year. The distraction associated with the ERP implementation did slow down the introduction rate of our new products, but we expect to return to our previous pace in the next few months. We remain confident in our ability to return to low double digit sales and earnings growth later this year.”