Footwear Insight

14 • Footwear Insight ~ July/August 2025 footwearinsight.com ADAM BECK CEO Beck's Shoes, San Jose, CA "Right now, I'm seeing very at revenue growth. We were up 3 percent last month, and then we were 7 percent up the month before. I kind of jokingly say that we're working harder than we've ever worked for close to at revenue. I think you'll see consumer condence maybe li a little bit in Q2 of next year, is what I'm suspecting." Current Challenges "We're not seeing as many 'blue collar consumers' as in years past — the mid- level consumer for us is bread and butter… e auent customer base is still coming in, buying the socks, insoles, and footwear. But with the middle class, with just the cost of living, basic household items, groceries and utilities, and stu like that, they're not buying six socks at a time. Now they're buying one, two, or three pairs of socks. So that's, I would say, the reduction in sundries, right?" What's Happening on the Salesfloor "Athletic trends continue to be strong. We're doing well with the athletic market. And health and wellness continues to be a huge trend. If you look at the supplement business right now, and you look at all the vitamins and all the supplements and all these things that are being preached on the social platforms... How can I leverage an average consumer that walks in — these vitamin supplement companies are injecting hundreds of millions of dollars of marketing into — and I'm saying, 'Okay, well, how do I take advantage of that?' We're creating a department within the stores called 'Recovery' — it's all about recovery… And that's another way of selling an additional pair of shoes… Our blue-collar business is about 26 percent of our top line revenue. We're telling this customer about recovery footwear. And recovery footwear is inexpensive compared to athletic and compared to work boots. You're going to buy a pair of recovery shoes anywhere in the $59 to $89 range. And so that's something where we're picking up some additional top-line revenue. is is going to be a big push going forward. We're launching it now, but 2026 will be huge. We're going to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in inventory, having it in our warehouse and be able to replenish it twice a week to all our stores. And we will never be out with the sizing. You never want to be out of any of the sizes with recovery footwear." Dealing with Economic Uncertainty "With these unknown taris and these unknown supply chain issues... there's obviously concern with what we're going to do in terms of, how much [price increases] gets passed on to the consumer, how much gets passed on to the retailer ourselves, and then, of course, the wholesalers picking up a piece of it. ere's just a lot of uncertainty out there right now, and it creates this angst that everyone has. We're purchasing what we purchased last year. Strategically, depending on the SKU, and depending on the vendor partner. Some vendors are coming up with some good strategies to protect us. And so those are the vendors that we're partnering with. We're going to be increasing with those strategic partners, the ones that are explaining their strategies to us instead of just giving us a wholesale increase in price." Big Initiative: A New Beck's Warehouse "Our big initiative right now is a warehouse we opened about a year ago. SHOP TALK On the salesfloor at Beck's Shoes. "Every week our executive buying team is looking at trends. Last week, we added three SKUs. The week before that, we added five SKUs. As we forecast every one of the 52 weeks, we're either adding or subtracting SKUs based on sales." ADAM BECK

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