Shoe Things for Higher Sales Revenues

Shoes are in the news:

• A Los Angeles Times article highlighted shoe-of-the-month clubs in which members are offered a selection every time the calendar page turns. The selection is determined by answers to questions the member gave upon enrollment, the member’s past purchases, and the club’s data about all members’ purchasing preferences.
• The Wall Street Journal described how retailer Foot Locker choreographed release of the $180 Jordan Retro 11 Concord sneaker to match when a prime demographic—service workers—were likely to have just received Christmas season tip income. One man interviewed for the WSJ article said he already owned fifteen pairs of Jordans.
• ABC News is reporting that L.L. Bean’s duck boot with leather uppers and rubber soles is a current fashion hit on college campuses. Updated styles of the century-old design include bright blue and pink. Sales volume for the boots has more than tripled over the past four years.

     There are few sure things in retailing. The ability of shoes to increase sales revenues might be one of them. In 1999, retailer Nick Swinmurn convinced venture capital investors to begin the firm now known as Zappos and owned by Amazon.com. Mr. Swinmurn’s pitch was that footwear in the U.S. is a market worth $40 billion annually.
     Whatever line of merchandise you sell, consider if you can include shoes. Sporting goods? Shoes fit well. Toys? How about tiny shoes for the dolls? Home improvement products? Steel-tipped shoes could make the do-it-yourselfer feel like they’ve the heft of a professional carpenter.
     High heel shoes have a magical appeal for women consumers. Many claim the added height makes a woman feel more assertive. A few classic psychoanalysts said the high heels’ shape penetrates any penis envy. Hey, there are two of them rather than the man’s one. The psychoanalysts refer to this as overcompensation.
     Closer to scientific rationality, Psychology Today opined on how the elevation sculpts the calf and thrusts the pelvis forward, stimulating sexual attractiveness all around. Shoe designer Christian Louboutin was quoted in a New Yorker essay: “When a woman buys a pair of shoes, she never looks at the shoe. She stands up and looks in the mirror, she looks at the breast, the ass, from the front, from the side, blah blah blah. If she likes herself, then she considers the shoe.”
     Want to sell more merchandise? Including footwear in your mix is a shoe-in.

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