The U.S. sneaker market continues to boom and one British retailer wants a much bigger piece of that pie.
But that is just a small sliver of the opportunity that JD CEO Régis Schultz sees for the Manchester, England-based retailer. The $24 billion sneaker market now represents about 60% of the U.S. footwear market, double the share from a decade ago, as running shoes replace Oxfords in many offices. And Schultz sees no end to the running shoe boom.
“As soon as you start wearing sneakers, you don’t go back to formal shoes,” he told me in an on-stage interview at the National Retail Federation conference earlier this month in New York.
“We see a lot more potential in the U.S.” said Schultz. “We have invested in our stores and they have a lot of energy and theater.”
“JD’s brand awareness continues to grow in the US,” Schultz said in a statement published with the financial results, “and, building on this momentum, we have decided to increase our marketing initiatives in North America.”
To set itself up for success in this competitive market, Schultz has invested in stores, and given employees more training on buying and merchandising the products it sells. “You need to have a point of view,” he said, emphasizing that store buyers should think outside the box to become tastemakers. “Our big wake-up call was that buyers used to be very lazy.”
“I’ve learned in my career that less is more,” Schultz said. “If you try to do too many things, you end up doing nothing.”
