Consumer Driven Forecasting to Improve Inventory Flow: Brown Shoe Company’s Journey

ConSUMer DrIven foreCASTInG To IMProve InvenTory fLow: Brown SHoe CoMPAny’S JoUrney By Jeff Brown B B rown Shoe Company, Inc. is a leading supplier of footwear with 12,000 employees and annual revenues of $2.4 billion. Based in St. Louis, Missouri, this consumer-focused company operates over 1,400 retail shoe stores in the United States, Canada, and China under the names of Famous Footwear, Naturalizer, Brown Shoe Closet, FX LaSalle, Franco Sarto, and Shoes.com (its e-commerce subsidiary). Its brands, which include Naturalizer, Life Stride, Franco Sarto, Via Spiga, Carlos by Carlos Santana, Etienne Aigner, Dr. Scholl’s, Nickels Soft, and Buster Brown, are sold at over 2,000 department stores, mass-merchandisers, independent, and specialty stores worldwide. BACKGroUnD With 90 million pairs of shoes sourced annually, orders were previously placed in overseas factories. Orders were delivered as we placed them, but there was no systematic process or mechanism to make adjustments to orders based on consumer demand. This was simply because we did not have an effective way of knowing how our shoes were selling at retail. We were limited to ad hoc reporting and emailing order changes, ...