Brown Shoe Divests Shoes.com, Focuses on Famous Footwear

Hard-charging Canadian entrepreneur Roger Harding acquired his third online shoe retailer since July last week by snapping up Shoes.com from Brown Shoe Company.

Neither BWS nor Harding, who acquired the business through his Vancouver-based startup Shoeme, disclosed the purchase price of the transaction.

Founded in 1999 and based in St. Louis,  Shoes.com, Shoes.com played a key role in bolstering BWS' e-commerce efforts by serving as the platform for many of its branded wholesale e-commerce sites, including Naturalizer.com, SamEdelman.com and ViaSpiga.com. But BWS CEO Diane Sullivan said the time was right to sell the business so management could focus on enhancing omnichannel efforts at Famous.com.

“With over 1,000 brick-and-mortar locations, an established online presence and over 1 million mobile app downloads, we believe Famous Footwear will be the leading omnichannel destination for the footwear industry,” she said.

Harding acquired control Vancouver-based start-up Shoeme and Seattle-based Onlineshoes.com in July through his merchant bank Harding Capital Corp. just months after selling Vancouver, BC-based Coastal Contacts for $430 million. Hardy plans to combine the two companies, which he said will generate combined annual sales of about $200 million this year. Shoes.com will expand Shoeme's offering from 400 to 480 brands.

“Our top priorities as we head into 2015 are to continue to broaden our offering of shoes, and provide the best online shopping experience possible for our customers,” said Hardy, noting that Shoeme launched its first private label this fall. Called Pika, it comprises a line of shearling boots for women.

BWS is also moving quickly. On Thursday, it announced it had renegotiated and extended it revolving credit facility to lower the interest rate by 100 basis points, increase its borrowing limit to $600 million and extend the agreement to December 2019. BWS said it will use the credit line primarily for working capital and to back letters of credit, but may also use it to invest in infrastructure and make acquisitions.