news Shoes.com to Caleres.com: Brown Shoe Co rebrands to a hand-reg domain

[Arpit131]

Brown Shoe Company today announced the official launch of its rebranding initiative, in affirmation of its evolving position in the marketplace. This initiative will help focus the company on a renewed standard of excellence, as it looks to best position its brand portfolio for accelerated growth and global expansion.

“We’re excited about our rebranding initiative, which will use our history to fuel our future,” said Diane Sullivan, CEO, president and chairman of the board of Brown Shoe Company. “Our new brand identity reminds us of the legacy we must preserve as we build for another century of progress. Part of that identity is our name and mark, and these two elements demonstrate the passion behind our 137-year-old success story and help set the benchmark for the continued importance of fit to our future.”

The name Caleres and the ‘Star-Five-Star’ mark, which is incorporated into the Caleres logo, were selected to reflect the company’s history and its passion for fit. Caleres was derived from the Latin word ‘calere,’ which translates to ‘passionate, to glow.’ The ‘Star-Five-Star’ mark has been in use by the company since 1885 and represents its passion around fit and its continuing dedication to creating the perfect fit for any lifestyle. Together, the name and the mark represent the company’s vision to be ferocious about fit in everything it does, whether it be in terms of production, style, trends or service.

Brown Shoe Company has $2.6 Billion dollars in global revenue and is a publicly traded company (BWS).

The complete article may be found on BusinessWire


What do you think of the new name? Do you like it?
What do you have to say about a company this big, going for a hand-reg domain name, shifting from Shoes.com to Caleres.com?

 

[domaincandy]

I'm pretty sure they are keeping the Shoes.com domain name. If they decide to give up that advantage for any price at all, this will definitely go down as one of the dumbest business decisions of all time. It is fine to rebrand, but if they in any way give up any percentage at all of those natural leads, then it is a serious mistake.

It is likely that Shoes.com will still remain Shoes.com, and they will own it. If they end up forwarding Shoes.com to their new site, then it is a mistake, but not fatal. Anything involving them not capitalizing on what the traffic that Shoes.com brings in, either by not using the site or selling the name, would be unfathomable, and I cannot imagine that happening. If that is what they have done, or what they plan on doing, then that is the equivalent of a supermodel slashing her own face because she doesn't want the advantages of being being beautiful anymore.

Of course, branding to a name that is not recognizable, cannot be pronounced consistently, cannot pass the radio test, and means nothing to 99 percent of the world's population might be a sign that these people have a business death wish. This can happen when decision makers are using other people's money.

 

[wot]

At first sight it looks like a very dumb move but maybe I am missing something?

 

[enterscope]

The publicity seems to be working... :D

 

[enlytend]

OK maybe I'm missing something because I haven't had enough coffee yet, but what does a rebrand of the Brown Shoe Company have to do with Shoes.com??? They don't own it, they SOLD it.

What they are rebranding is their parent company Brown Shoe Company (brownshoe.com) , which been around for over 100 years and sells under a bunch of retail brands, including Dr Scholls, Famous Footwear, Lifestride, Naturalizer ...They were using shoes.com as an ecommerce retail site - maybe it wasn't working out for them financially (shoes have one of the highest chargeback rates of all ecommerce categories).

I'm guessing they didn't rebrand to shoes.com because they wanted something more distinctive for the parent company. For one thing, it will be MUCH easier to get and enforce Caleres as a trademark!!!

Makes sense to me from a marketing standpoint to rebrand newer and more attractive sounding name. They probably do 90% of their retail business through the other brands - the people who still remember Brown Shoe as a trusted little shoe store on Main Street are probably getting past the median age of their target market.

The sale should have given them plenty of capital to adequately market the new name. And since it's the parent company not their popular retail brands I'm sure it will work for them.

 

[abaiti]

They knew some secret about new Google update

 

[john_karr]

I guess the people at Brown shoe Co know what they are doing.