Foot Locker: it’s a sneaker thing
January 30, 2021
Foot Locker Retail, Inc. is an American sportswear and footwear retailer, with its headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.
Foot Locker was established in 1974 and founded as a separate company in 1988. However, its roots date back to 1879, as it is a successor corporation to the F. W. Woolworth Company (“Woolworth’s”). Many of its freestanding stores were originally Kinney Shoes and Woolworth’s locations.
Foot Locker is famous for it’s referee shirt, which all of its employees wear.
The Foot Locker company operates the Foot Locker chain of athletic footwear retail outlets, along with Kids Foot Locker and Lady Foot Locker stores, as well as other athletic-based divisions including Champs Sports, Footaction USA, House of Hoops, and Eastbay/Footlocker.com, which owns the rights to Final-Score.
Let’s go back a bit in time…
In 1963, the F.W. Woolworth Company purchased the Kinney Shoe Corporation and operated it as a subsidiary. Kinney branched into specialty shoe stores and bought Foot Locker in 1974.
The Woolworth Corporation remained the parent company of Foot Locker, and in 1998 it changed its name to Venator Group, Inc.
The first Foot Locker opened in the Puente Hills Mall in City of Industry, California, and still is open today.
Foot Locker brand became the Woolworth/Venator company’s top-performing line, and on November 2, 2001 Venator changed its name to Foot Locker, Inc.
On November 19, 2004, Foot Locker announced that its quarterly profit rose 19 percent, helped by stronger sales.
In 2004, Foot Locker spent a mere $350 million to acquire the Footaction USA brand and approximately 350 stores from Footstar for another $100 million.
In 2007, Foot Locker joined with SchoolPAX to launch the Foot Locker School Rewards Program, which was designed to provide charitable donations to schools that signed up and shopped at Foot Locker with a custom-coded key tag or school code.
In 2011, Foot Locker joined DoSomething.Org for the Foot Locker Scholar Athletes program. The program honors high school athletes for their academic excellence as well as their sportsmanship and community spirit.
On June 26, 2012, Foot Locker rang the Closing Bell for the trading day as it celebrated the 100th anniversary of the first stock offering made by its predecessor, the F. W. Woolworth Company, on the New York Stock Exchange.
In 2013, the company acquired the German retailer Runners Point Group.[
In 2014, Foot Locker sold its CCS to Daddies Board Shop.
Foot Locker has steadily risen in Fortune 500 rank, from 446 in 2011 to 363 in 2018. Foot Locker has recorded a record turnover of 7.151 billion dollars at the end of the fiscal year.
In 2019, Foot Locker invested in companies like GOAT, an online resale marketplace for sneakers.
Gloria Sauvé
Communications and Marketing