Pacific Sunwear Takes Baby Steps With New Chain
Pacific Sunwear, Inc. will open its first One Thousand Steps footwear stores in mid-April, but the company will start small with its fledgling chain of shoe stores.
The surfwear retailer will open six of the footwear stores next month. The first will open April 7 at the Galleria at Tyler, in Riverside, Calif. Other stores include locations at Los Cerritos Center in Cerritos, Calif., and Mall of America in Bloomington, Mich. Other locations will be in Florida and Rhode Island.
The store’s styles of footwear will be split between casual and athletic, according to a statement from Galleria at Tyler. The Galleria store will be 2,500 square feet and carry brands such as Miss Sixty, Ben Sherman and Converse.
Pacific Sunwear Chief Executive Seth Johnson said that the footwear chain could eventually grow to 600 to 800 locations. “One Thousand Steps will enable us to leverage our brand management skills in what we believe is an underserved market. This new concept gives us an exciting growth vehicle that adds a new and distinct customer base to our business,” Johnson said in a company statement.
The company’s history of good brand management should make One Thousand Steps a success, said Jeffrey Van Sinderen, a retail analyst at B. Riley & Associates, based in Los Angeles. He also said that taking baby steps would be a good move. “I’m sure there is a learning curve, and they’ll have to modify a lot of things along the way,” he said. “I think it’s a well-thought-out concept. I don’t think there’s a lot of competition in the mall with the same branded strategy.”
—Andrew Asch
