Brown Shoe Company, Inc. announced that August retail sales for Famous Footwear were $133.4 million for August 2004, compared to $135.8 million for the same period last year. Same-store sales for August decreased 5.5%.
Famous Footwear sales for the first 30 weeks of fiscal 2004, were $675,300,000, compared to $665,900,000 for the year-ago period. Same-store sales for the 30 weeks were down 1.1 percent.
“Business in early August lagged our expectations, and was negatively affected by later school openings and delayed Back-to-School shopping at Famous Footwear. While we are encouraged that same-store sales turned positive later in August, and continue positive into September, we believe it is too soon to fully assess the Back-to-School season with several key selling weeks ahead of us,” said Brown Shoe Chairman and CEO Ron Fromm.
Retail sales at Brown Shoe's domestic Naturalizer retail division, a 380-store chain selling the Naturalizer brand of women's footwear, were $11,600,000 for the month, compared to $12,000,000 last August. Same-store sales decreased 7.1 percent for August, in part due to the later timing of a catalog mailing and the Labor Day shift.
For the first 30 weeks of fiscal 2004 the domestic Naturalizer stores' sales were $105,200,000 compared to $104,500,000, and were down 1.7 percent versus last year on a same-store basis.
