Caleres

Caleres Inc.
Formerly called
 Brown Shoe Company
(1875–2015)
Public
Traded as NYSE: CAL
Industry Retail, Wholesale
Founded 1875
Headquarters Clayton, Missouri
Number of locations
 1,369 (January 2011)[1]
Key people
 Diane Sullivan (President, Chief Executive Officer, Chairman)
Products Footwear
Revenue Steady$2.24 billion (2009)
Number of employees
 13,400[2]
Website caleres.com
Previous logo

Caleres Inc. is a global footwear company that owns and operates a variety of market-leading footwear brands. Its headquarters is located in Clayton, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.[3][4]

Origins

The company was created in St. Louis and was originally named Bryan, Brown & Company after its founders George Warren Brown and Alvin Bryan. The company began business in 1878 and incorporated in 1881 as Bryan-Brown Shoe Company. In 1886, the company became the Brown-Desnoyers Shoe Company, after Mr. Bryan retired. In 1893, Mr. J.B. Desnoyers also retired, and the name was changed to Brown Shoe Company.[5] In 1895, the Brown Shoe Company factory had about six hundred employees who could make five thousand pairs of shoes and boots a day..[5]

In 1925, Brown's widow endowed the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis.

On May 27, 2015, Brown Shoe changed its name to Caleres, retaining the "Brown Shoe" name for a future line of men's footwear.[6]

Business operations

Caleres, Inc. is a $2.6 billion footwear company with worldwide operations. The company operates the 1,100-store Famous Footwear chain. It also operates 100 specialty retail stores in the United States, Canada and China under the Naturalizer name. Brown Shoe's wholesale divisions own and market leading footwear brands including Naturalizer, LifeStride, Via Spiga, Sam Edelman, Connie and Franco Sarto. The company also owns licensed brands including Dr. Scholl's, Carlos by Carlos Santana, DVF - Diane Von Furstenberg, Fergie Footwear and VINCE. branded footwear.

As of February 2011, American Sporting Goods Corporation operates as a subsidiary of Caleres. Its brands include Avia, Ryka and Nevados.[7][8]

Diane M. Sullivan serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of Caleres. She has been president and CEO since May 2011 and took on the additional role of chairman of the board beginning February 2, 2014. [9] She joined the company as president in 2003 and added chief operating officer to her responsibilities in 2006.

Company mascots

Since 1904, Caleres (Brown Shoe Company) mascots have been cartoon characters Buster Brown and his dog Tige. Both appear on the company's television commercials. In the 1940s and '50s, they became stars of Buster Brown Comics when the company made a brief foray into the comic book publishing industry. The characters appeared on the covers of the comic books, and each contained an adventure, such as Robin Hood. The characters were revived with an updated, more contemporary look for a brief advertising campaign in the 1980s and 1990s.[10]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Brown Shoe 2010 Annual Report - Financials (10-K)
  2. ↑ "Brown Shoe Company", data from Hoover's
  3. ↑ "Clayton city, Missouri." U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved on June 13, 2009.
  4. ↑ "We're Brown Shoe." Brown Shoe Company. Retrieved on January 23, 2010.
  5. 1 2 St. Louis Up To Date: The Great Industrial Hive of the Mississippi Valley. Richly Endowed by Nature as a Port of Entry, a Manufacturing Centre, and a Place of Residence. A Glance at Her History, a Review of Her Commerce, and a Description of Her Leading Business Enterprises; With Illustrations of Her Public and Commercial Buildings and Places of Interest. St. Louis, MO: Consolidated Illustrating Co. 1895.
  6. ↑ http://caleres.com/our-history/
  7. ↑ "Brown Shoe Acquires American Sporting Goods Corporation" (Press release). Reuters. February 17, 2011. Retrieved 2014-02-18.
  8. ↑ "Textiles, Apparel and Luxury Goods: American Sporting Goods Corporation", Bloomberg Businessweek
  9. ↑ ST. LOUIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Diane Sullivan is now CEO, president and chairman of the board of Brown Shoe Company (NYSE: BWS) The company’s board of directors appointed Sullivan as chairman of the board last June, and her new role became effective yesterday, February 2, 2014.
  10. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmC8uVhGlHQ

External links

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