As part of Foot Locker‘s plan to simplify and grow its business, the footwear retailer announced a decision to close more than 400 stores locations from now through 2026 focus on higher-performing doors.
This number includes about 200 locations in C/D malls and about 200 in lower-performing A/B malls across North America. Altogether, these stores, which tend to be less profitable than others, represent about 10% of Foot Locker’s sales, said Tony Aversa, SVP global store development during the presentation.
Overall, Foot Locker plans to go from its current 2,700 stores to nearly 2,400 by 2026.
Executives announced the downsizing during the company’s investor day presentation on Monday while outlining a multi-pronged strategy to help Foot Locker grow sales to $9.5 billion by 2026.
“First, it’s about simplifying our organization, closing underperforming businesses to reinvest those resources and focus on the banners and geographies that’ll drive profitable growth,” explained Foot Locker CEO Mary Dillon during the presentation regarding the store closures.
Watch on FN
These 400 closures include about 125 underperforming Champs locations that Foot Locker plans to exit this year. These stores are mostly older and in non-priority markets.
At the same time, Foot Locker also plans to open 300 new House of Play concept stores, or larger format Kids Foot Locker locations that are about 7,500 square feet. Foot Locker also said it sees a chance to grow its WSS brand to over 300 store locations over time by scaling the banner to new markets. Foot Locker currently operates around 115 WSS stores.
So while the net number of locations will be less, Foot Locker’s square footage will actually increase by 10% to over 14.5 million square feet, Aversa said.
“New formats will surpass 400 locations and represent over 20% of our square footage,” he added.
