With this in mind, Oxford is making a $1 million commitment of additional support over the next four years to help our local communities address economic and racial inequality through education.
Our stores and restaurants, which make up 47% of our overall sales in 2019 just began to reopen in early May, and we expect to have almost all of our locations open by the end of June.
But we don't expect revenue from stores to reach prior year levels at anytime during 2020.
In 2019, wholesale sales at Tommy Bahama decreased to 20% of revenue, and at Lilly Pulitzer 21% of revenue.
E-commerce, which was 23% of our revenue in 2019 grew by 12% in the first quarter and the positive momentum has continued into the second quarter as we reap the benefits of the long-term investments we have made in digital and e-commerce, such as upgrades and redesigns of websites, enhanced search engine optimization and new enterprise order management systems.
In the first quarter, adjusted gross margins declined 220 basis points due to higher inventory markdowns and a modest increase in promotional activities.
We have made significant strides in reducing expenses in the first quarter with the reductions across most spending categories, reducing SG&A by $17 million compared to last year.
Employment costs were reduced by $11 million in the first quarter as we made the difficult decisions affected our employees.
We furloughed substantially all of our retail and restaurant employees, eliminate positions throughout the organization, reduced salaries for certain employees, and we suspended our bonus and 401(k) match programs.
Managing inventory is a critical component of ensuring the health of our brands, and we have taken meaningful actions to reduce and defer our inventory orders, with approximately a 25% reduction in forward orders.
By repurposing some of Tommy Bahama spring-summer collection, we've taken about $25 million of inventory, moved it out to Tommy Bahama's resort line in December, and we have been working with our vendors to extend payment terms.
We are pleased with our efforts and inventory at quarter end increased only 8% despite the significant sales decline.
We have ample liquidity to meet our ongoing cash requirements, reflecting the strength of our balance sheet entering the pandemic, as well as the recent actions we have taken to mitigate the COVID-19 impact.
During March 2020, as a proactive measure to oyster cash, and we drew down $200 million of our $325 million asset base revolving credit facility.
At the end of the first quarter, we had $208 million of borrowings outstanding, an additional $114 million of unused availability and $182 million of cash and cash equivalents.
Our cash flow from operations used $46 million in the first quarter compared to a use of $6 million in the prior year period.
Our assessments included at the fair values of the Southern Tide goodwill indefinite-lived intangible assets as of May 2, 2020 did not exceed their respective carrying values, resulting in a $60 million non-cash impairment charge.
Last quarter, the Board of Directors reduced our quarterly dividend from $0.37 per share to $0.25 per share.
The Board has determined that it's appropriate to keep the dividend payable on July 31 at $0.25 per share.
The Board has also elected to reduce its cash compensation by 50% for the remainder of the fiscal year.

Summary:
Our stores and restaurants, which make up 47% of our overall sales in 2019 just began to reopen in early May, and we expect to have almost all of our locations open by the end of June.
But we don't expect revenue from stores to reach prior year levels at anytime during 2020.
E-commerce, which was 23% of our revenue in 2019 grew by 12% in the first quarter and the positive momentum has continued into the second quarter as we reap the benefits of the long-term investments we have made in digital and e-commerce, such as upgrades and redesigns of websites, enhanced search engine optimization and new enterprise order management systems.
We are pleased with our efforts and inventory at quarter end increased only 8% despite the significant sales decline.
We have ample liquidity to meet our ongoing cash requirements, reflecting the strength of our balance sheet entering the pandemic, as well as the recent actions we have taken to mitigate the COVID-19 impact.