Mark Lardie, footwear industry veteran, has been appointed to president and CEO of Rack Room Shoes, effective June 15. In this role,
Lardie will be responsible for leading the Rack Room Shoes and Off
Broadway Shoe Warehouse retail brands.
Previously, Lardie was division president Wholesale at Brown Shoe Company. Other past jobs included SVP general merchandise manager at Famous Footwear, which is also owned by Brown Shoe, and SVP and GMM at Footstar.
“We are pleased to add Mark’s experience and leadership to our team. We
have two strong retail brands in the United States, Rack Room Shoes and
Off Broadway Shoe Warehouse. They are well positioned to serve a broad
base of the U.S. footwear consumers. We believe by building on the
success our team has already begun, we can create a dominant position in
the American footwear retail landscape,” said Heinrich Deichmann,
chairman of Deichmann Group, the parent of Rack Room.
The Deichmann Group currently operates 3,175 shops in Germany, 21 other European countries and the United States. This reflects an increase of 236 shops from 2010 with more than 156 million pairs of shoes sold.
Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Rack Room Shoes is a family footwear retailer.
