SUPER HOLLYWOOD: Famous Footwear Careers

Friday 13 July 2012

Famous Footwear Careers

Today's Famous Footwear began in 1960 with the establishment of a single shoe store, Neil's Factory Shoe Outlet (launched as "Neil's Shoes"), in Madison, Wisconsin.The store was launched by a 29-year old named Neil Moldenhauer and was financed by a $10,000 loan.
In 1963, Neil's Factory Shoe Store hired a college student named Brian Cook as a stock boy, a man who would rise up the company ladder to become President of Famous Footwear in 1979. Nearly half a century later Cook recalled:

"We were one of the first factory outlets in the Midwest.... The store bought all closeouts and was primarily a women's store. The market had never seen anything like that... Most of the stores that shoppers went to were mom-and-pop stores, department stores were all very expensive, not at all like they are today. The market was wide open for big, open formats selling discount product. As a result, we started a rapid store expansion program. We ended up putting a lot of little stores out of business....

"Eventually, in the early 1990s, everybody was a discounter. Everyone was opening shoe stores like ours. Everyone copied our concept. We were groundbreaking and very revolutionary at the time, and not very popular with a lot of regular-priced retailers.

The name "Famous Footwear" was launched in 1964 when Moldenhauer opened a second store in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. By the end of the decade of the 1960s, eight Famous Footwear and Neil's Factory Shoe Outlet stores were in operation, with combined annual revenues approaching the $1 million mark.