The month of April was a bit surprising for sales of Sport Footwear products considering that the Easter business — which fell three weeks later this year than last year and moved back reporting by a month — barely materialized.


Based on retail point-of-sale data compiled by SportsOneSource and reported through the companys SportScanInfo (www.SportScanInfo.com) and OIA VantagePoint (www.OIAVantagePoint.com) data platforms, overall Sport Footwear sales grew in the low- to mid-single-digits in dollar sales for the four-week fiscal month ended April 30, while unit sales increased in the low-single-digits for the period.  Average selling prices rose nearly 2 percent for the month on strength in Lightweight Running and Natural/Minimalist footwear product in the Running and Functional Outdoor Footwear categories.


Sales were strongest at the mall, but were negative at full-line sporting goods and in the family footwear channel as accelerated growth in the aforementioned Natural/Minimalist and Lightweight Running categories partially offset steep declines in the Toning business, primarily from the imploding rocker-bottom business in the category.


Mens Sport Footwear sales, which includes Athletic Footwear,  Outdoor Footwear and Casual Lifestyle Footwear, grew in the mid-single-digits while womens Sport Footwear declined in the mid-singles and kids Sport Footwear grew in the high-single-digits.


Overall Running Footwear category sales grew in the high-teens with all of the gains coming from consolidated All Lightweight Running business, which includes the specific Lightweight Running and Natural/Minimalist sub-categories, and is on track to do more than $1.5 billion this year.


Basketball Footwear grew in the high-teens while Training improved more than 20% for the month.


Toning sales declined about 40% in dollars and in the low-teens in units, as the market is forced to anniversary the biggest weeks of the year for Toning last year. 


Casual Athletic declined in the low-single-digits for the month as Athletic Lifestyle starts to show some sign of life again.
Cleated sales were flat on weak Baseball Footwear sales as weather took its toll on the start of Little League and softball seasons in much of the country.  The Sandals business improved in the mid-single-digits on new product entries from Nike, Jordan and Merrell.


As expressed in the chart below, overall Sport Footwear sales started off weak for the four-week month ended April 30, declining in the mid-single-digits on shifts in product launches and weather issues across many regions of the U.S. market that cut into Athletic Footwear segment sales for the week. Trends returned to a more normalized pattern in week two of the month, finishing the month strong in week four with a high-single-digit trend for the week.


As previously noted, the month on April received a big boost from the nascent Natural/Minimalist product categories and the strong infusion of product — much of it tagged as barefoot — into the market.  The outdoor side of this business, which was the source of much of the excitement last spring when the Vibram FiveFingers product really started to percolate in the specialty shops, still managed to more than double sales at retail in fiscal March, while the running side of the business, which had fewer styles last year and was the primary entry point for Merrell and Fila in the barefoot space this spring, saw sales quadruple for the month. 

 

SportScanInfo is now reporting sales of product in the Natural/Minimalist sub-category under the Training/Fitness category, although product entries in this category are still limited.
The biggest driver of the Natural/Minimalist trends in the non-specialty channels is the Skele-Toes offering from Fila, which was picked up by many retailers that did not have access to the VFF product, including mid-tier department stores, big-box sporting goods stores and family footwear retailers.  The product, which was rather broadly distributed and saw a heavy promotional cadence in April, helped push average selling prices of Natural/Minimalist product down to the $50 range in the family footwear channel in April, down from the mid-$70 range in spring last year.


Sales of Sport Footwear in the retail fiscal first quarter ended April 30 were up on the high end of the mid-single-digit range, falling short of the high-single-digit trend for the trailing 52-week period.