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It's Shoe Love, Pumping Up Sales
Rhoda Colman shops in the shoe section of Nordstrom in Littleton, Colo.
(By Matthew Staver -- Bloomberg News)
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What retailers find particularly surprising about these gains is that they have ticked up despite high gas prices and fears about winter heating bills. Levy of Hawley Shoes said he was prepared to start offering customers a $10 gas card if things got bad as gasoline prices jumped -- but he never had to. More people than ever trekked into his stores.
"Maybe they are walking more" to save on gas, he said, only half joking.
Maurice Breton, president of Manassas-based chain Comfort One Shoes, said sales since August "have been increasing at a far greater pace than they had been." He thinks there may be a "Desperate Housewives" effect. The hit ABC show features sexy housewives with great clothes and, of course, great shoes.
"There are a lot of subliminal references to footwear in the media," Breton said.
Retailers are perpetually vexed by what is really in the minds of consumers. But no matter why women want to buy shoes, the shoes have to be nice enough to buy. Women are snapping up boots, said Nancy Chistolini of Hecht's, especially younger women buying Western boots. Boot sales at Shoe Carnival were up 40 percent in October. Levy said he had just been on the phone with a boot supplier who had come into a sudden supply of 1,000 boots -- and Levy bought them all.
"I can't keep them in stock," he said.
No wonder, when shoppers like Leslie Ramsay of Old Town Alexandria are on the prowl. She bought four pairs of boots at Nordstrom yesterday. Or like Sharon Weiss, shopping with her niece and four friends -- who together had bought 15 pairs of shoes, including several pairs of boots.
Retailers say there has also been a big migration from casual and athletic shoes toward more decorative styles, with buckles, bows, rhinestones, stitching, patterns and color. "Shoes have more character -- they can be a statement in and of themselves," Weiss said, spreading her arms out to the bustling shoe department. "Look, it's not all brown shoes."
And nothing gets a woman more excited than a shoe that is like an exclamation point to an outfit, said Matthew E. Rubel, president of lower-priced chain Payless ShoeSource Inc., the nation's largest shoe store chain, where sales were up 4 percent in October.
"Footwear has a natural emotional place in a woman's mind," he said. "That's being expressed more in product today through color, through silhouette, through material, through novelty."
In other words, women have always gotten excited about shoes, but now there's something to actually get excited about. And it's across all price categories. Chains such as Payless are "getting the fashion trends in footwear available at one-fourth the price," said Cohen of NPD.
Of course, not everyone understands the whole women-and-shoes thing. Janet DeBoe of St. Louis, in town on business, was reveling in her boot purchase and going on about what shoes do for her. Her husband, Curtis, splayed on a chair nearby, could only shake his head.
"I don't get it. I don't get it. Sorry," he said.
