Article Excerpt:
TWST: We would like to begin with a brief historical sketch of the company and a picture of the things you are doing at the present time.Mr. Edison: Bakers Footwear Group is the largest national retailer of moderately priced footwear for fashionable young women. We've actually been in the business since 1922 starting as a division of Edison Brothers Stores, becoming our own separate company in 1999 and going public early in 2004. We compete against other mall retailers. None of them, however, operate in our exact niche, so we find ourselves really being the only one offering moderately priced footwear for young women in a specialty environment. The competitors in the malls would include stores like Journeys, which is primarily a teen and young male athletic shoe concept; Naturalizer, which is primarily an older women's shoe store; Payless ShoeSource, which is a much cheaper, not very fashionable footwear alternative; and lots of athletic shoe retailers as well as higher priced retailers in a similar niche such as Aldo or Steve Madden.
TWST: It seems like very fertile ground.
Mr. Edison: There are probably 20 apparel retailers going after the
customer that we go after, but we are really the only shoe retailer in
the niche. Some of these apparel companies sell some shoes but not very
many shoes. The shoes are a significant afterthought for the apparel
retailers in this niche. So we do think it's an opportunity, and it's
one of the reasons we went public and raised the capital because we
thought we needed to grow.
Tickers included in this excerpt: BKRS
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