Fleet Feet Hitting Stride

CARRBORO (Monday, August 01, 2005) - Fleet Feet is hitting its stride as a running shoe retailer.

The Herald-Sun/Bill Willcox

Rona Van Willigen is co-owner of the Fleet Feet store in
Carr Mill Mall, and Jeff Phillips is president of Fleet Feet Inc.,
which has corporate headquarters in Carrboro.
Launched in 1976 as a single store in California, the Carrboro-based company has grown to 67 stores in 37 states. The privately held firm has survived in the rough and tumble $13 billion world of athletic shoe retailing by staying focused on its buyers and sellers -- specifically, its customers and store owners.

That means making sure customers get what they need and all the company's stores are locally owned and operated.

For its customers, Fleet Feet offers a hands-on fitting process that includes an evaluation of the customer's foot, gait and support needs. It can take 15 minutes to two hours, but it's important that customers walk away with the right shoe, said Rona Van Willigen, who co-owns the Fleet Feet store in Carr Mill Mall with her husband, Bobby Biles.

"There're a lot of indicators, if you look at the foot, on what the mechanics of the foot are," she said. "The main goal is the right fit for the shoes but also the right level of support."

Van Willigen's store has a wall filled with rows of shoes, priced from $85 to $109.

The fact that Fleet Feet spends so much time making sure customers get the right fit separates them from many of the national chains, said Bill Boettge, president of the National Shoe Retailers Association, a 93-year-old trade organization that represents independent shoe retailers.

"That distinguishes them from the Foot Lockers and all of the kind of companies who hire young people to just bring out shoes," Boettge said.

And because the company knows who its customers are, don't look for Fleet Feet to open any stores in a traditional mall, said Jeff Phillips, the company's president. "We're not locked into trying to serve that 12- to 18-year-old male fashion customer, which is the driver for mall business," he said.

Likewise, the best way to ensure dedicated customer service is to have the same people who own a store also be the ones running it, Phillips said. "We want folks who want to own, operate and work in their store," he said. "That's been a real key to our success and how we compete with retailers who sell shoes."

Fleet Feet is smart to franchise stores to local owners, said Boettge, who has been president of the shoe retailers organization for 21 years. "It's their livelihood and they depend on it -- that makes all the difference," he said. Locally owned shoe stores generally have 20 to 25 percent higher sales than corporately owned stores, Boettge said.

The company also hangs with the competition by staying involved with the local running community, Phillips said.

"At the end of the day we are locally owned and our stores tend to become a focal point for the running and fitness community," Phillips said. "How much is it worth to have your name on a race form? Not much. It's being out there, being involved, being visible."

Fleet Feet, which in 2001 had just over $25 million in sales, expects to top $50 million in revenues this year, with each store averaging $900,000 in sales. The company is paid a franchise fee initially and gets a percentage of each store's sales. About 70 percent of the company's revenues come from footwear,

Fleet Feet opened an East Coast supply office in Chapel Hill in the 1990s because about half the company's stores were on this side of the country. Company officials soon learned that the area's philosophy was a good fit and moved the corporate headquarters. In 1993, Tim Raynor bought the company from one of the founders.

The company, which operates out of the second story of a brick building along Main Street, has 11 employees who spend most of their time supporting the existing stores.

The company expects to have 100 stores by 2008.

"We're the only channel that's not over-retailed," Phillips said. "There are still markets in the country with strong running communities that are underserved."

Fleet Feet says its fastest growing customer base is 35- to 55-year-old women. "They've been a driver for a lot of the growth the last five years," Phillips said.

And the company wants to build on that by offering a wide selection of sports bras, with fitting insight adapted from its time-honed process for fitting footwear.

Many female athletes who buy sports bras off the rack end up with one that is either too tight or loose and has the wrong cup size, Phillips said.

"It's an area we think we can grow and develop from a business perspective," the Carrboro resident said.

For More Infromation Please contact:
Jeff Phillips
president

View all Fleet Feet Sports Press Releases

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