Dive Brief:
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Footwear retailer DSW Tuesday announced three initiatives it will focus on in 2016, one of which is increasing its line of children’s shoes in an effort to capture parents’ attention.
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DSW chief merchandising officer Debbie Ferree said on a conference call with analysts that the retailer will also focus on its assortment of athletic shoes, women’s footwear, fashion, and kids. The retailer saw its athletic shoe sales grow 13% last year.
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Lastly, the retailer said it will keep a closer eye on women’s fashion and speed up its supply chain to be sure it’s stocking the latest styles to appeal to women.
Dive Insight:
As millennials age, retailers are starting to reassess how they appeal to that large and famously picky demographic.
DSW has a pretty good handle on what happens to its customers after they find a partner and then have a child: all is good until the baby comes along, and then the company’s market share dips, according to CEO Roger Rawlins.
“I mean, we see that when a customer is a part of DSW and engaging with DSW before they have a child, we have a certain market share,” he said in answer to a question about its new focus on kids. “Once they find their significant other, we sort of maintain that market share. When that child is born, our market share cuts significantly on the adult side and then when that child leaves the house, we get right back to where we were before they had a child. So our goal is to, yes, obviously grab kids market share but it's also about not walking them to our competition once they have a child in their home. So it's a combination of both kids but also how it drives adult share.”
DSW said that it stumbled in Q4 with assortment that didn’t move the way it would like, resulting in heavy discounting over the holidays in order to maintain market share.
But the company is finding success with its in-store pick-up and ship-from-store omnichannel efforts.
“[S]tores are a huge asset to us,” Rawlins said. “So we want to use our stores as a weapon, both in how we compete in the brick-and-mortar space, but also and more importantly, in the digital space.”