Footstar has completed the consolidation of the Footaction and Just for Feet businesses under the Footstar Athletic umbrella. The two athletic ran separate merchandising, marketing and store operations organizations after combining their marketing, planning, finance and human resources functions in March of last year.

In a move rumored for some time and finally announced this week, Footstar Athletic has combined all merchandising functions under two GMM’s and Store Ops under a single head.

Mark Lardie, most recently Footwear GMM for Just for Feet takes the helm as SVP/GMM for Footwear for Footstar Athletic. Glenn Dopfel, who most recently ran apparel at Footaction, will serve as VP/GMM of Apparel for the consolidated unit. Lee Applbaum is SVP Marketing and Dennis Lyons will function as VP of Stores & Sales. Lyons had been running the shared services group.

Jack Bellini, the Foot Locker vet brought in last October as SVP Merchandising and Marketing for Footaction, will retain his SVP title as head of Men’s Footwear for the total business. Joe Passio is now VP/DMM over Women’s and Kid’s.

The Uprise stores will continue to report in to Applbaum as an “incubated” unit.

The company was mum on the number of cuts, if any, that were made in the move, but we would expect to see some efficiencies gleaned from the consolidation. The merchandising and marketing groups weren’t top heavy to begin with, but we would expect to see some small upside when you don’t need duplicate regionals in the field anymore.

Same-store sales at the Footstar Athletic unit were up 1.0% in the fiscal second quarter ended June. Footaction same-store sales for the quarter increased in the “high single digit” range, but were offset by a “nearly double-digit” decline in comps at Just for Feet.


Management said at the time that the gains at Footaction resulted in part from increased offerings from Nike. FTS said they will “expand the scope of Nike offerings at Just For Feet and in its Consumer Direct business” in Q4.

Footstar bought Just for Feet three years ago. As of the end of June, it operated 94 Just For Feet superstores and 437 Footaction stores.