Brown Shoe Company, Inc. announced August retail sales at Famous Footwear rose 3.7 percent to $135,800,000 for the four-week period ended August 30, 2003, compared to $131,000,000 for the same period last year (ended August 31, 2002). Same-store sales for August increased 2.0 percent.
Famous Footwear sales for the first 30 weeks of fiscal 2003, were $665,900,000, compared to $669,300,000 for the year-ago period. Same-store sales for the 30 weeks were down 3.0 percent.
“We were pleased with our back-to-school business, as our marketing programs boosted traffic and our fashion-right assortments allowed us to register healthy margin gains over last year,” noted Brown Shoe Chairman and CEO Ron Fromm. “Looking at categories, we saw strong performance in athletics, driven by fashion athletics, and our women's business continued strong, driven by increases in dress footwear.”
Retail sales at Brown Shoe's domestic Naturalizer retail division, a 211-store chain selling the Naturalizer brand of women's footwear, were $8,100,000 for the month, compared to $8,800,000 last August. Same-store sales decreased 0.4 percent for August, which traditionally is a lower sales volume month for the stores.
For the first 30 weeks of fiscal 2003 the domestic Naturalizer stores' sales were $67,100,000 compared to $77,700,000, and were up 0.8 percent over last year on a same-store basis.
MONTH AND YEAR-TO-DATE SALES (millions)
Same-
Store
FY 2003 FY 2002 % % Stores Open
(8/30/03) (8/31/02) Change Change 8/30/03 vs. 8/31/02
August - Famous
Footwear $ 135.8 $ 131.0 3.7 2.0 905 923
Y-T-D - Famous
Footwear 665.9 669.3 (0.5) (3.0)
August - Naturalizer 8.1 8.8 (8.0) (0.4) 211 238
Y-T-D - Naturalizer 67.1 77.7 (13.6) 0.8
Other Highlights for the month
- Famous Footwear opened new stores in the following markets:
Kennesaw, GA; North Wales, PA; Franklin, TN and Brown Deer, WI.
