Shoes.com takes e-commerce expansion in stride

Shoes.com, the online shoe store owned and operated by Brown Shoe Co., is marking its fifth anniversary in web retailing by launching a new e-commerce brand and adding upgrades to its current site.

The company, No. 192 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites, is launching an athletic shoe site, BlueFireSports.com, and making plans to launch an additional lifestyle site later this year.

BlueFireSports.com features shoe categories for men, women and kids and accessories. The new site also has detailed buyer’s guides for various shoe categories, including running, basketball, cross training, fitness, adventure, water sports, golf and tennis. To drive traffic to the new site, Shoes.com is offering free ground shipping and returns and a 115% price guarantee. If a shopper spots a cheaper price on another site within 10 days of making a purchase on its new athletic shoe site, Shoes.com will give the shopper 115% of the difference up to the price of the item listed on BlueFireSports.com.

Online footwear sales are growing nearly 15% annually and will become a $5.5 billion market by 2010, according to Forrester Research Inc. Shoes.com is the latest online retailer to expand its total number of e-commerce sites to garner more sales. Gap Inc., No. 24 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites, recently launched PiperLime.com, which features more than 100 different brands and categories for men, women, girls, boys and babies. Shoebuy.com, No. 127 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites, also just expanded its total number of SKUs to about 400,000 and the value of its online inventory from $1.5 billion to $2 billion.

In addition to the launch of BlueFireSports.com, Shoes.com also is updating its core web store with new features and merchandise. Shoes.com now features customer product reviews and new alternative forms of payment such as Bill Me Later from I4 Commerce. “We continually seek ways to enhance the customer experience through footwear selection as well as the site’s ease of use,” says Shoes.com President Steve Adler. “Going forward, our focus is on making Shoes.com even better for shoppers.”