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Showing 1 - 5 Total: 22 Results 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |  |
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Trendy Shoe Retailers, Makers In Step With Wall St., For Now
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Pity the humble tennis shoe.
Sneakers, once standard out of the office, are being reserved for basketball and tennis courts. For almost everything else, Americans are wearing fashionable, comfortable shoes that blur the line between athletic and formal footwear.
"People who might have owned five pairs of shoes in the past now own eight or 10," said Wedbush Morgan analyst Jeff Mintz, who follows several shoe companies. "If you start to look around when you go to the supermarket, not many people are wearing their white Nikes anymore."
The trend is driving investors to shoemakers and retailers.
Deckers Outdoor, (DECK) maker of Teva sandals and Ugg sheepskin boots, jumped 8.5% on a Feb. 5 upgrade from Robert Baird analyst Mitch Kummetz. Three days later its shares hit an all-time high.
Crocs, (CROX) also upgraded by Kummetz, reached a new high on Feb. 7. Its stock more than doubled since it debuted last February.
"In two years, Crocs has accomplished what a really successful footwear brand might achieve in 10 years," Kummetz wrote about the company, which created the market for its comfortable, if odd-looking, resin clogs.
Wolverine World Wide, (WWW) maker of brands such as Merrell and Harley-Davidson, set a 52-week high on Jan. 31.
Even Nike (NKE) is in on the act, offering casual and dress shoes and clothing along with its core athletic gear. It set a new high Feb. 9, two days after unveiling an ambitious five-year growth plan focusing on its other brands and overseas sales.
Analyst Angelique Dab of Nollenberger Capital Partners says many of the surging shoemakers have created strong, unique brands such as Crocs and Ugg boots.
Then there's Heelys, (HLYS) maker of a hybrid sneaker-skate with a wheel tucked in the heel. Its stock hit a high of 40.09 on Feb. 5. Shares have pulled back but still are up 64% from Heelys' Dec. 8 IPO at $21.
Its shoe appeals to a large audience: 36 million kids age 6 to 14 in the U.S. Heelys also has 40 million European kids in its sights.
Experts say fashion-conscious consumers are lifting the industry.
"Shoes are the easiest way to spiff up an outfit," Dab said. "You get a new pair of shoes and it really changes the vibe."
But fashion is fickle. Red-hot in 2000 and early 2001, Skechers (SKX) shares went into a two-year tailspin when sales faltered. Shares are just now nearing those old highs.
Phoenix Footwear (PXG) peaked in 2004 and still hasn't found its footing. Third-quarter profit fell 67% as the company predicted a loss in the fourth as it tries to reposition its Tommy Bahama brand.
Deckers struggled in 2005 and 2006 when its Teva sandals fell out of favor. Sales rebounded late last year as it introduced new models.
"I think that's one lesson we all learned from white athletic," said Deckers CEO Angel Martinez. "You have to obsolete yourself three or four times a year or the consumer loses interest."
Retailers benefit from all those new styles too. DSW (DSW) set a fresh peak on Feb. 8 after beating profit views on strong same-store sales.
Consumers seem willing to spend more on their feet, Mintz says.
"Footwear has been kind of a hot area for well over a year now," he said. "And it doesn't really seem to be slowing down."
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on Jun 26
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Ugg Boots' Profit Still Comfy
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Deckers Outdoor (DECK) may have launched its Ugg brand many years ago, but the popular footwear brand is still fueling its growth.
The company recently released its fourth-quarter and full-year results, easily beating Thomson Financial's analyst poll. This was also the seventh quarter in a row that the company exceeded expectations.
Earnings per share for the quarter jumped 94%, an acceleration from the prior quarters' 0% and 32% results. Sales growth also sped up to 37% from 3% and 19%.
Ugg footwear sales shot up 40% to $110 million, accounting for 89% of total sales. Sales of its Teva footwear brand rose 16% to $13 million. And the company expanded its after-tax margin to 19% from 7% just two periods prior.
Deckers was started by a University of California, Santa Barbara, student in 1973. It started out with the making of its original Deckers sandals, but has since grown into an international firm as it acquired various brands along the way.
The types of footwear it makes range from leather casuals to athletic to outdoor shoes. Two years after going public in 1993, Deckers acquired the Australian brand Ugg Holdings and started importing the sheepskin boots to the U.S. Today, the line also includes clogs, slippers and handbags.
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on Jun 25
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Nike Unfastens Her Sandal
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It's not enough to "just do it" anymore. Now, you have to "just do it" online.
Athletic-apparel giant Nike (NYSE: NKE) has decided that the Internet needs a more central place in its advertising strategy. Rather than designing a traditional TV/radio/ billboard campaign and throwing in the occasional online banner ad, Nike wants to start with the digital message and build from there.
Trevor Edwards, Nike's VP of global brand management, says the days of one big ad and one big shoe are over. "Now you've got to engage consumers on every level," he said in a Wall Street Journal interview last summer. In that spirit, the company is ready to ditch its longtime advertising partner Wieden+Kennedy for a more digitally attuned firm.
For now, it's just one product line -- running shoes -- that's up for outside bids. But the agency itself recognizes that it is falling behind the digital times, and who knows where Nike's new train of thought will lead?
Perhaps the shoe maven developed a taste for pixels when Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) helped promote its soccer equipment through the joga.com World Cup site last year. The great thing about this sort of campaign is that you get to choose your customers and draw them in with exclusive content that attracts exactly the sort of consumer you want in your stores. Your marketing message can be highly personalized and much more effective than the old mass-market broadcast tactics were.
Google and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) both have started to zone in on this thinking, and they are emerging as leaders in this new wave of advertising expertise. They certainly aren't marketing agencies in the traditional sense of that term. Instead, they're reshaping how enormous advertising clients such as Nike, General Motors (NYSE: GM), and Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) are thinking about their promotional activities.
These are still the early days of online marketing, and perhaps it's a bit too soon to crown a champion. But when you consider the amount of cash flowing around the global ad industry every day, it doesn't take much of a market share to generate some serious income. Do you still think Google looks expensive?
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on Jun 25
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Just do it, marketers say
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Nike, PetSmart and other companies are trying to sell their brands by inviting consumers to take part in activities linked to the product or service.
Twice a week, 30 or more people gather at the Nike store in Portland, Ore., and go for an evening run. Afterward the members of the Niketown running club chat in the store over refreshments. Nike's staff keeps track of their performances and hails members who have logged more than 100 miles.
Meanwhile, at the Whole Foods supermarket in Seattle, shoppers take part in a "singles" night the first Friday of every month. The store's marketing staff organizes a wine tasting or sets out snacks in a room used to stage cooking classes. Customers can opt to wear a red or blue ribbon to indicate whether they are looking for a male or a female partner.
"It's fun," says Michelle deAnda, who runs the store's marketing. "People are meeting people with similar lifestyles."
Both events are classic examples of "experiential" branding ¡ª making the companies into more than just sellers of commodities. Instead, they support and communicate with core customers, creating communities that ideally lead to higher sales.
Leading consumer brands are seeking to deepen this experiential element by creating similar communities, with retailers in particular augmenting events at their traditional bricks-and-mortar stores with online efforts aimed at striking up a "conversation" with customers.
Mark G. Parker, chief executive of Nike Inc., told analysts this year that the new power of the consumer was "the most compelling change we've seen over the past four or five years. They are dictating what the dialogue is, how we're conducting it, and it's definitely a two-way conversation."
While intense attention is being paid to online community building, retailers are continuing what Jeff Smith, head of consulting firm Accenture's global retail practice, says is a tradition of using the store as a focus for delivering "brand experiences."
He cites the example of Fiesta Mart, a Texas supermarket chain that started targeting Latinos in the 1960s with Friday night events in its parking lots, with grilled food and a mariachi band, that became the focus of the local community.
"It's emblematic of so many innovations in the retail industry," he says. "Everyone knew about it, but few tried to copy it."
That has now changed as specialty retailers have led the way, in their physical stores and online.
REI, for instance, a leading outdoor equipment company, offers training in kayaking and mountain biking at its stores; PetSmart and Petco, the two leading pet stores, offer dog training and other classes for pet owners; Cabela's, a hunting store, offers classes on "trout tactics" and gun cleaning in vast "destination" stores that include stuffed game, artificial trout streams and restaurants.
Specialty retailers have moved toward two-way online community building, beyond using their websites to provide basic background information and answer customer queries.
The PetSmart website, for instance, operates a digital photo center and encourages users to send in images to be featured on the site.
The implications for the future of branding are vast. Nike, a global name, is restructuring its entire branding operation because of the enormous response to two online initiatives it launched last year.
The company says that more than 200,000 runners are using the Nike Plus website, which it set up last year after launching a running website that can communicate with Apple iPods.
The site allows runners to upload and compare their performances, and more than half visit the site at least four times a week, rivaling the 14 to 18 visits a month by Starbucks' core customers. Chairman Howard Schultz says that makes the coffee company the "most frequently visited retailer in the world."
Charlie Denson, president of the Nike brand, says the company's goal is to have 15% of the world's estimated 100 million runners using the system.
Separately, Nike's joga.com social-networking site, which was created in partnership with Google to run for eight weeks during the 2006 World Cup, was used by more than 1 million people to establish personalized World Cup pages. A related video of Ronaldinho, the Brazilian star, was downloaded 32 million times.
Denson says the response to both projects helped persuade the company to divide its Nike brand operations into six categories ¡ª running, basketball, soccer, men's fitness, women's fitness and sports culture ¡ª with teams that would develop relationships with specific customer categories.
Joga.com, Denson says, is "a compelling platform," but it traditionally would not have been incorporated into a sustained effort to develop customer relationships.
"When the World Cup was over, our brand teams who had built that whole platform moved on to the next thing. And I thought, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa, you just dropped the keys to the kingdom in the moat,' " he said.
In a similar vein, Procter & Gamble Co., the household and health products giant, launched the Capessa site with Yahoo in January, an attempt to set up an online community "where women can share inspirational stories as well as practical tips and information relevant to the various aspects of their lives."
But the site will also enable P&G to gain insights into the "interests and product needs" of women ¡ª providing the company its own version of Nike's running clubs.
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on Jun 25
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Brown Shoe's top executives earn $3M in '06 salary
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Brown Shoe Co. Inc.'s top executives received salaries in 2006 totaling nearly $3.1 million.
Andrew Rosen, the firm's former executive vice president and chief financial officer, earned total compensation of $7 million last year. Now retired, he signed an early retirement deal with the company last fall and now serves as a senior adviser. Rosen's total 2006 compensation figure includes $377,693 in base salary, $126,509 in stock option awards and nearly $6.8 million in other compensation, which includes his post-retirement benefits through Jan. 31, 2009.
Ronald Fromm, Brown's CEO and chairman, received total compensation of about $4.3 million, which includes $862,980 in base salary, $278,576 in other compensation, nearly $1.4 million in stock and option awards, an annual incentive award totaling $986,000 and his accrued pension value.
Mark Hood, named senior vice president and CFO just in October, received total compensation of $213,339, which includes $96,923 in base salary, $6,528 in other compensation, $44,588 in stock and option awards, and an annual incentive award totaling $65,300.
Diane Sullivan, president and chief operating officer, received total compensation of nearly $3 million, which includes $718,462 in base salary, $92,151 in other compensation, nearly $1.3 million in stock and option awards, an annual incentive award totaling $725,800, and her accrued pension value.
Joseph Wood, president, Brown Shoe Retail and Famous Footwear, received total compensation of nearly $2 million, which includes $529,885 in base salary, $61,022 in other compensation, $648,351 in stock and option awards, an annual incentive award totaling $616,900, and his accrued pension value.
Gary Rich, president, Brown Shoe St. Louis Wholesale, received total compensation of nearly $1.5 million, which includes $507,462 in base salary, $14,062 in other compensation, $360,008 in stock and option awards, an annual incentive award totaling $456,300, and his accrued pension value.
The other compensation category includes executives' personal use of the firm's corporate aircraft: Fromm, $242,733; Sullivan, $81,123; Wood, $44,862; Rosen, $22,714; and Hood, $6,528.
The company's annual stockholders meeting is set for May 24 at its headquarters located at 8300 Maryland Ave., in Clayton, Mo. Shareholders are scheduled to vote at the meeting on five directors to Brown Shoe's board, including Sullivan for an initial three-year term expiring in 2010. Shareholders also will vote on an amendment to the company's Certificate of Incorporation to reduce the par value of the common stock from $3.75 per share to 1 cent per share, and to ratify Ernst & Young LLP as its independent registered public accountanting firm.
St. Louis-based Brown Shoe Co. Inc. (NYSE: BWS) owns and markets shoes under the Naturalizer, LifeStride, Connie, Buster Brown and other brands; and operates the Famous Footwear and Naturalizer retail stores.
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on Jun 25
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| Showing 1 - 5 Total: 22 Results 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
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