Footwear

Sportsman’s Warehouse is building out its retail portfolio in familiar territory.   The Utah-based retailer announced three new locations: Everett, Washington; Pueblo, Colorado; and Visalia, California. The new stores are expected to open in the second half of 2017.     The location in Everett will be the tenth Sportsman’s Warehouse store in the state of Washington and will be located in the Greentree Plaza.    

The 388,000-sq.-ft. Flagstaff Mall has been acquired by Dallas-based Cypress Equities for an undisclosed sum. The single-level center opened with two anchors in 1979 and added a third anchor when it was expanded in 1987.   Cypress plans to add three outparcel pads amounting to 18,000 sq. ft. to the former Woodmont property, and is exploring the conversion of select inline retail space to new uses. “It is our goal to establish Flagstaff Mall as the dominant retail destination in northern Arizona,” said Cypress CEO Chris Maguire.

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A new acquisition gives Walmart an even stronger foothold in the world of e-commerce.   Jet.com, which was purchased by Walmart in September for approximately $3 billion, has acquired online footwear retailer ShoeBuy for approximately $70 million. The purchase expands Jet.com’s footwear offerings, and gives Walmart more firepower in its battle against Amazon, which owns ShoeBuy’s main competitor, Zappos.   The deal closed on Dec. 30.  

Job postings by Amazon may have revealed the company’s newest apparel entry: athleisure.   Several online job listings published by Amazon in December suggest that the online giant is developing a line of workout apparel, reported ReCode.     

Novus, the shoe retailer with 40 years’ experience and 60 stores in Puerto Rico, has opened its first stateside location at Florida’s Pembroke Lakes Mall.   “Novus is aware of the importance of the South Florida market and the large Puerto Rican population of more than 300,000 currently residing in the area that has a close identification with the brand,” said Grupo Novus Marketing Director Sandra Castellon of the brands first steps into the U.S. market.  

As Genesco expands its business, it needs an inventory management platform that can scale just as quickly — now it has one.   The retailer and wholesaler of branded footwear, headwear and apparel initially deployed an automated retail inventory management platform, called Vision Merchandising, from Jesta in 1998. At the time, the company operated less than 500 stores, and used the system to support the firm’s exponential growth and empower users to work more efficiently.   

Private-equity firm Warburg Pincus has agreed to acquire Gabriel Brothers (Gabe's) from Alvarez & Marsal Capital.   The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.  

While Finish Line notched up reasonable overall sales growth in its third quarter, this has been overshadowed by both very weak comparables and an almost doubling of net losses to $40.4 million.     Overall, the results are markedly worse than last quarter when total sales grew by 5.4%, aided by a 5.1% growth in comparables.  

Finish Line missed analyst estimates for third quarter earnings, an issue the company blames on declines in its apparel and accessories categories.   The athletic specialty retailer reported revenue of $371.1 million for the 13 weeks ended Nov. 26, 2016. While this is an increase of 3.0% over the prior year period, it falls short of the consensus estimate of $411.61 million.