Shoes.com website trades hands again, this time to DSW owner

Dive Transient:

• DSW’s dad or mum, Designer Brands, has acquired the Sneakers.com domain, creating the company the second (recognised) acquirer of the area in a lot less than two a long time soon after Walmart offered it in 2020.
• A Designer Models spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the corporation obtained the web site and intellectual property belongings for an undisclosed selling price as a “crucial strategic retail domain.” 
• A concept on the Shoes.com web-site tells site visitors that “now we’re a element of dsw.com” with a website link to DSW’s e-commerce retailer. Footwear News formerly reported on the Shoes.com acquisition.

Dive Insight:

The Sneakers.com title has had a prolonged and tangled background. Established in 1999, Shoes.com was acquired by Brown Shoe Co (which went on to turn out to be footwear wholesaler and retailer Caleres) in 2000.

In 2014, Brown Shoe Co. marketed the e-commerce web page to Canadian e-commerce enterprise ShoeMe. Below Brown Shoe, product sales at Shoes.com had been declining for several years in advance of the sale. 

Footwear.com went bankrupt in 2017. Afterwards that 12 months, Walmart picked up the Sneakers.com domain identify and IP belongings for $9 million, sending the targeted traffic to its ShoeBuy e-commerce retail store, which Walmart acquired in 2017 by means of its now-defunct Jet subsidiary. (DSW picked up Shoe.com’s ShoeMe.ca area in the bankruptcy aftermath, according to trade media experiences at the time.)

As Walmart revamped and repositioned its electronic small business, the retail big bought off Footwear.com for an undisclosed amount of money to non-public equity organization CriticalPoint Funds, which at the time owned footwear retailer JackRabbit.

Final January, CriticalPoint announced that Footwear.com was officially part of its Running Specialty Group, which also owned other enterprises which includes JackRabbit. The agency claimed at the time that the mix of Footwear.com and JackRabbit would build a “market-main, omni-channel specialty footwear system with a vast variety of branded footwear.” Very last yr, CriticalPoint marketed JackRabbit to operating keep franchisor Fleet Ft.

And now Footwear.com resides beneath Designer Manufacturers and its DSW business, where the corporation has concentrated on e-commerce growth. In March, CEO Roger Rawlins instructed analysts that desire for DSW’s digital business hit $1 billion for the to start with time.

“The large-targeted visitors Sneakers.com domain furthers Designer Brands’ extensive-array approach to grow its footprint digitally and strategically place and distribute Designer Brands’ Owned Models as well as shoes from top rated National Model companions,” the Designer Makes spokesperson claimed. 

No functioning property have been portion of the offer for Sneakers.com. Designer Models did not title the vendor of the IP and area identify.