News

Retail Top 100 2012, No. 99: Payless Shoesource

April 30, 2012

Faced with a U.S. unemployment rate averaging 9 percent and competition from shoe departments at discount retailers such as Target Corp. and Walmart, Collective Brands, is closing 475 underperforming Payless and Stride Rite stores — about 10 percent of its total locations—over the next three years, more than 300 of which were to be shut by January 2012. Luring price-conscious urban-area customers in the wake of the longest recession since the Great Depression has been the company's biggest challenge, as Payless saw same-store sales drop for four straight years.

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