Brown Shoe Co aims to grow its Asian sales by a fifth annually in coming years, double the 10 percent growth expected for 2007, largely because of ambitious store opening plans in China, a senior executive said.
Asia accounted for just 5 percent of the US footwear firm's $2.5 billion in sales in 2006, but Brown Shoe thinks it can double its sales growth in the region within a few years, Tim Heard, senior vice president of Brown Shoe International told Reuters in an interview in Shanghai on Saturday.
In the next five years, in a joint venture with Singapore-listed Chinese peer Hongguo International Holdings Ltd, Brown Shoe expects to open more than 400 stores and department store shops in China carrying its Naturalizer brand, and over 100 stores featuring its Via Spiga brand.
In the United States, which now provides 90 percent of global sales, Brown Shoe will open 500 outlets by 2012 as part of a plan to double revenue over a five-year period, said Howard Herman, the company's chief financial officer.
The US footwear firm, which owns the Naturalizer and Famous Footwear store chains in North America, will tailor women's shoes sold in Asia to suit smaller Asian feet and local tastes, Heard said.
On Tuesday, Brown Shoe announced it would launch two brands of women's shoes in China through its Hongguo joint venture. The US firm, which started obtaining materials from China nearly 20 years ago, is a relative late-comer to the Chinese retail market, where Jones Apparel Group Inc's Nine West and other global brands have a head start.
It also faces competition from major local players such as Belle International Holdings, China's top retailer of women's shoes, whose Belle and Staccato shoes are prominent in upscale Shanghai department stores.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.