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Non-Tech : Just For Feet (FEET) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lanac who wrote (606)	7/16/1998 2:44:00 PM
From: Don Dorsey	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 750

A fashion outlet mall is opening at Primm, near Las Vegas. Feet is mentioned as one of the major tenants. <<<<<<<<<<<<< Among the retailers expected to lure shoppers: Last Call from Neiman Marcus the Clearing Center, Williams Sonoma Marketplace, St. John Knits, Tommy Hilfiger, Just for Feet and The Gap.

To: lanac who wrote (606)	7/22/1998 1:27:00 AM
From: lanac	Respond to of 750

Article 2 of 200 The Corporation: RETAILING JUST FOR FEET IS MAKING TRACKS Its ''big-box'' shoe stores have walked all over rivals By Nicole Harris in Birmingham, Ala. 07/20/98 Business Week Page 70 (Copyright 1998 McGraw-Hill, Inc.) Anita Mollica is obsessed with tennis shoes. The mother of two used to spend days scouring stores in Birmingham, Ala., for the perfect pair until she discovered Just For Feet Inc. On a recent visit, Mollica browsed the toddler section for her 2-year-old. Nearby, while rock music blared, a boy practiced his jump shot on the store's half court. ''The selection is great, and the kids have a ball,'' says Mollica. That's music to the ears of Harold Ruttenberg, Just For Feet 's CEO. From a single store 10 years ago, Ruttenberg has built the fastest-growing athletic-shoe retailer, averaging 104% annual growth since 1994. His ''big-box'' stores stock 4,000-odd styles--10 times as many as most rivals. Combining choice, service, and entertaining promotions, Ruttenberg has doubled his share of the $12.4 billion U.S. athletic-shoe market in the past two years, to 4%, according to analyst Marcia L. Aaron of BT Alex. Brown Inc. As industry giants such as Ventacor's Foot Locker struggle with management problems and outdated merchandise, Just For Feet has bucked a four-year, 23% decline in industry sales to hit a record $479 million in revenue in 1997. ''They've revolutionized this industry,'' says Renny Smith, managing director of Thomas H. Lee Co. Smith's buyout firm recently sold its Sneaker Stadium Inc. chain to Ruttenberg and now holds 1.8 million shares of Just For Feet . Aaron expects the 293-store chain to earn $54.4 million this year, up from $34.3 million in 1997. She thinks sales will jump 43% in 1998, to $682.5 million. The stock has not had as smooth a climb. A move last year into smaller stores worried Wall Street and combined with industrywide weakness to depress the shares from 31 in January, 1997, to 12 1/2 last August. A change in accounting on store-opening expenses--from an aggressive 12-month write-off period to a more conservative practice of taking all charges at the time of the opening--forced the company to restate earnings. That didn't help the stock, either. Steady results since have aided the shares' climb back to a recent 29. BOOTING UP. Just For Feet 's advantage is its speed in recognizing shifts in taste. In 1996, when shoemakers offered a daunting number of styles linked to the Olympics, Just For Feet stocked the widest selection. The next year, when hiking boots hit big, most sneaker chains lost out. But Just For Feet had only to stock up its existing boot selection. A typical Just For Feet store is 15,000 to 25,000 sq. ft. Mall-based rivals such as Foot Locker and Footaction USA Inc. average 4,000 to 6,000. Such size lets Just For Feet buy in bulk and negotiate discounts, Ruttenberg says, of 15% to 20%. That is passed on to customers in each store's Combat Zone, where discounts can reach 70%. To humanize his big spaces, the CEO has designed stores-within-a-store--booths filled exclusively with one maker's apparel and footwear. At the Las Vegas store, goods from Nike Inc. are housed beneath a video wall broadcasting the brand's commercials. Elsewhere, Timberland boots climb a mock waterfall. ''In-store presence like that is just as important an asset to us as an athlete endorsement,'' says Bill M. Sweeney, senior vice-president and general manager of Reebok International Ltd.'s North America division. Ruttenberg doesn't stop with selection. He spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year training his staff. Managers must graduate from Just For Feet University, a three-week program that includes everything from foot anatomy to setting up store displays. A $750,000 two-way satellite system lets manufacturers such as New Balance Athletic Shoe Inc. beam training tutorials to Just For Feet salespeople. New Balance, which offers an average of four different widths per sneaker--compared with one at Nike Inc.--says training was a big factor in boosting the brand, No.6 nationally, to the No.3 seller at Just For Feet . Selection and training have helped the chain outpace the competition. According to analyst David G. Magee of Robinson-Humphrey Co., an Atlanta investment bank, Just For Feet store sales average $650 per sq. ft., more than twice the $250 that mall stores average. But there have been challenges: A sharp growth in inventory was a problem until Just For Feet installed information systems to help bring the stock level down. It fell 22%, from $152 per sq. ft. in 1996 to $119 in 1997. ''A MIRACLE.'' Ruttenberg says he works by trial and error. Plenty of ideas have vanished like out-of-style sneakers. Gone are the in-store nursery (''Too busy for it,'' says Ruttenberg) and a $100,000 drive-through window. ''Things weren't well planned in the beginning,'' he says. ''When I look back on it, it was just pure luck and a miracle that it worked.'' A South African native who started by selling Levi's jeans out of his car, Ruttenberg came to the U.S. in 1977 at the age of 34 with only $30,000. He opened a sportswear store in a mall a few years later, but after five years couldn't afford the rent. That's when he built a 10,000-sq.-ft. store right outside the mall stocked only with his best-seller: athletic shoes. After a decade following this successful model, Ruttenberg is heading back to the mall. In 1997, he bought two regional chains, adding 86 smaller stores. Called Athletic Attic, these stores maintain many of Ruttenberg's big-box traits--including a smart staff, the store-within-a-store pattern, and a generous stock of 1,500 styles. Located in strip malls, they are meant to open up regional markets but avoid intra-mall competition. Analysts expect the mall-based stores, starting from a small base, to grow twice as fast as big boxes this year. ''I get accused all the time of being too risky,'' says Ruttenberg, ''but you have to take risks in this business in order to succeed.'' So far, the risks are paying a nice premium. Photograph: FAST FOOTWORK: Ruttenberg doubled his share in sports shoes in two years PHOTOGRAPH BY ANN STATES/SABA Illustration: Chart: JUST FOR FEET 'S FAST BREAK CHART BY ERIC HOFFMANN/BW -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright c 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

To: lanac who wrote (606)	7/22/1998 1:30:00 AM
From: lanac	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 750

Business; Financial Desk Hot on Their Heels Just for Feet Is in a Sprint to Catch Shoe Store Rivals JAMES F. PELTZ 07/04/98 Los Angeles Times Home Edition Page D-1 Copyright 1998 / The Times Mirror Company The sneaker business has been on loose footing for a year now, but athletic-shoe retailer Just for Feet Inc. keeps sprinting ahead with aggressive expansion plans--and Wall Street likes what it sees. Indeed, stock in the Birmingham, Ala.-based chain hit a 52-week high this week of $28.94 in Nasdaq trading. If you haven't heard of Just for Feet , it's because the company's Southern California presence is currently limited to two stores: at the Ontario Mills outlet center in Ontario, and in the San Diego suburb of La Mesa. But the retailer is counting on that changing. Just for Feet wants to get bigger, quickly, and makes no secret of its desire to one day supplant Foot Locker as the biggest U.S. chain of athletic-shoe stores. A key site of its ambition is Southern California. "Once we start going into a territory, we don't stop," Just for Feet founder and Chairman Harold Ruttenberg said in a telephone interview, adding that his goal is to expand by 50 stores in California. In the near future, Just for Feet plans to open more of its trademark "superstores" in the region. Typically built adjacent to shopping malls, the stores feature entertainment for shoppers and are up to 20,000 square feet in size, or about five times larger than mall stores run by Foot Locker and the No. 2 chain, Footaction USA. Just for Feet will be a tenant at the Block at Orange, a giant $165-million, open-air retail and entertainment complex (formerly called CityMills) in Orange County that is scheduled to open this fall. In the San Diego area, the company plans stores in Vista and Mira Mesa later this summer. The chain overall has 244 stores nationwide (including 59 franchised outlets), or 100 more than it had just a year ago. Besides erecting its own stores, Just for Feet also has been buying selected rivals--including smaller, mall stores--and last month it agreed to buy Sneaker Stadium Inc., which has 38 superstores of its own, mostly east of the Rockies. Last year, though, Just for Feet 's blazing growth was one reason why the company stubbed its toe. As the sneaker business went soft--causing big problems for giants Nike Inc., Reebok International Ltd. and others-- Just for Feet 's inventories bulged and its earnings growth came up short of 0expectations, said Marcia Aaron, analyst at BT Alex. Brown Inc. in San Francisco. "They still made money, and profits were much better than the year before, but it wasn't what we were looking for," she said. Just for Feet 's profit for its fiscal year ended Jan. 31 shot up 34% from the prior year, to $21 million, on an 87% surge in sales to $479 million. But Just for Feet 's "same-store sales"--those of stores open at least a year, and the retail industry's key benchmark--rose 4.5% in fiscal 1997, a much smaller gain than in the prior four years. "Like most participants in the industry, they did stumble a bit in 1997," said Brent Rystrom, analyst at the investment firm Piper Jaffray Inc. in Minneapolis. "There were diminished expectations." This year Just for Feet is back on its, well, you know. Aaron said its same-store sales growth is holding steady around 4%--which "is what we would expect"--and at the same time the company has "really tightened up on their cost and inventory controls." Analysts also expect the company's profit to jump 44% this year, to $1.01 per diluted share. Its stock--which went nearly straight up in the mid-1990s after the company's initial public offering in 1994 and then backed off in 1996 and 1997--is again up a sizzling 94% so far this year. Nike, meanwhile, is up 14%, and Reebok is down 4%. To be sure, Just for Feet is a long way from catching Foot Locker, a unit of Venator Group Inc. (the former Woolworth Corp.) that has nearly 3,000 outlets worldwide when its Lady Foot Locker and Kids Foot Locker stores are included. Just for Feet also has considerably fewer stores than the 550-outlet Footaction USA, which is owned by Footstar Inc. But with its bigger stores, Just for Feet 's fiscal 1997 sales are fast closing in on Footaction's, which totaled $608 million last year. Just for Feet 's stores are designed to stand out in other ways. They often include basketball courts, games, videos and music, and there's dozens of employees to help shoppers at each location. "It's a different environment altogether," Ruttenberg said. "We're much more in the entertainment business." The stores also carry 4,000 to 5,000 styles of athletic shoes, versus a few hundred at mall stores. That wider selection helps insulate Just for Feet from consumers' quickly changing tastes in the fashion part of the sneaker market. "Our competitors are much more fashion-driven, so they carry only the latest and hottest [styles]," he said. "We carry them too, but they're only a small part of our business." Ruttenberg, 55, started Just for Feet in 1977 with a single mall store in Birmingham. A native South African, he was running a small apparel business in Johannesburg in the mid-1970s when, sensing the increasing political turmoil swirling around apartheid, he moved his family to the United States. With $20,000, he opened his first store but struggled at first. Unemployment and interest rates were sky high; consumer confidence was not. But after 10 years, his lone store was doing $4 million a year in sales. He added a few stores but still had fewer than a dozen outlets when, in 1993, he decided to grow dramatically, and the next year he raised $20 million by taking the company public. Ruttenberg still owns about 20% of Just for Feet , a stake now worth $150 million. * SECOND WIND: Nike and other retailers rebound from sluggish sales. D3 (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC) On the Run After dropping last year, Just for Feet shares are climbing up again. Monthly closes on Nasdaq and latest: Thursday: $28.50 Source: Bloomberg News GRAPHIC-CHART: On the Run / Los Angeles Times; PHOTO: Just for Feet 's entertainment-oriented superstores are expanding to Southland. Above, employees dance in Las Vegas shop.; PHOTOGRAPHER: GARY FRIEDMAN / Los Angeles Times -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright c 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.