Footwear Insight - Business Report Quarterly

A stone's throw away from the Ohio River, just north of Louisville, KY, Jeffersonville, IN is the corporate home of Shoe Sensation, a 250-door family shoe chain that reaches across 23 states from North Dakota to South Texas to Virginia. Celebrating its ruby anniversary in 2024, the chain counts private equity firm Palisade Capital Management as a principal investor and generated approximately $370 million in 2023 annual revenues according to Zippia.com. Its 6,000-sq.-., open stock format doors typically carry 9,000 to 10,000 pairs of shoes and have a focus on underserved, small U.S. communities. Dave Schoengart, Shoe Sensation's CEO for the last seven years, says the chain prides itself on its use of technology and data to stay one step ahead of rivals, which include larger operations such as Rack Room and DSW. Shoe Sensation aims to consistently improve the overall metrics of its business. is is the primary reason the retailer decided to partner with Traf-Sys and its people counting technology more than 20 years ago. "You know the most important KPI in retail is conversion," points out Schoengart. "How many people walk in the door that eventually walk out the door with products?" Data reports generated by Traf-Sys for each store in its system help Shoe Sensation see how well it did with inventory purchasing decisions nine months earlier, what style/model trends may be emerging and engage in predictive staff scheduling. e process has the most experienced, strongest sales per hour staffers work during the busiest store traffic days and hourly windows. "You want to put the right people on the sales floor at the right time based on their capabilities," suggests the CEO. "And so, the only way you can do that is to understand the traffic and the conversion patterns of the store." But Shoe Sensation's senior management team realizes that traffic patterns and trends will vary by door. Schoengart cites one example where one store location had big traffic numbers during a certain window around dinner time but a low conversion rate for the period. e reason – customers were entering the store to kill time while waiting for their table to be called at the local wing joint in the strip center. Shoe Sensation regularly congratulates local store management teams for their location's most recent conversion rate, say 36 percent, but encourages them to consider additional actions that will help them get a step higher, at say 37 percent, the following month. Historical traffic patterns are consistent year-aer-year, such as the weeks around spring break, Easter, tax-free weekend, Black Friday and a few weeks before Christmas, whether the market's economy is or isn't doing well at the time. is allows for better merchandising, advertising, and promotional planning during those annual periods. But the utilization of traffic counting technology from Traf-Sys enables Shoe Sensation to stick to its overall growth strategy and gameplan for the remainder of the year. "Because the measure of success at retail, whether it's a Walmart or a Shoe Sensation is 'am I meeting or exceeding my sales plan, right?'" opines Schoengart. n RETAIL TECH 22 Footwear Insight Business Report Quarterly ~ Q2 July 8 2024 footwearinsight.com KEEPING COUNT SHOE SENSATION STAYS ONE STEP AHEAD WITH TRAFFIC MONITORING Data reports generated by Traf-Sys for each store in its system help Shoe Sensation see how well it did with inventory purchasing decisions nine months earlier, what style/ model trends may be emerging and engage in predictive staff scheduling. Dave Schoengart CEO, Shoe Sensation

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