Brown Shoe reported a strong holiday period. For the nine weeks ended January 2, the company shared 7% same-store sales comps at Famous, and 4.7% of the specialty group, which exceeded their expectations for Q4.
For the future, BWS is moving its focus to driving EPS back up to $1 a share in a normalized manner. Citing that they can attain that price, they believe it will be somewhere between 15 to 18 months away. Speaking at the ICR XChange Conference, Ron Fromm, chairman and CEO, said Brown Shoe had reduced their costs by maintaining great inventory management, and increased improvement in turnover rate.
Brown will also be offering a new brand in the upcoming year. Accordingly, “Naya” will be offered in about 200 specialty shops, independents, as well as key national department stores. Fromm also emphasized that new marketing strategies would be utilizing various online networking tools such as Facebook.
Moreover, Brown underlined their continued relationship with online suppliers such as Zappos, Shoebuy and Piperlime. “Today the e-commerce business has grown to over $100 million in sales, and we see that growth continuing as we move forward,” says Fromm.
