DSW Parent Designer Brands Acquires Shoes.com Domain – Footwear News

Shoes.com is changing hands again – this time joining the Designer Brands Inc. family.

In a statement sent to FN today, parent company DSW said it had acquired “key strategic retail domain ‘Shoes.com’ and associated intellectual property assets” for an undisclosed amount. Private equity firm CriticalPoint Capital LLC is the latest publicly known parent company of Shoes.com, but Designer Brands declined to reveal whether it was the seller.

A company spokesperson noted that the domain and intellectual property were spun off as part of the sale and that Designer Brands did not purchase any underlying operating business assets.

FN has contacted Critical Point for comment.

A landing page on Shoes.com currently states that the dotcom is now “part of DSW” and a link directs shoppers to the DSW.com site. Customers with questions about existing orders placed before 04/25/2022 are asked to fill out a form on the website.

Designer Brands has yet to provide details on Shoes.com’s future, saying only in a statement, “This is a new acquisition and we have further development plans around it, which we will share in the months to come.”

A spokesperson added, “The Shoes.com high-traffic domain reinforces Designer Brands’ long-term strategy to expand its digital footprint and strategically position and distribute Designer Brands’ own brands, as well as shoes from top brands. national partner brands.

Shoes.com has changed hands several times over the past decade.

In 2014, the website was sold by Brown Shoe Co. (now Caleres) to Canadian online retailer ShoeMe. Three years later, in January 2017, this company abruptly closed its operations, leaving behind many disgruntled customers who did not know how to receive orders or make returns.

In April of the same year, Walmart purchased the Shoes.com domain and merged it with its newly acquired ShoeBuy division, renaming the entire footwear e-commerce division as Shoes.com. For the next few years, Shoes.com was responsible for handling all shoe merchandising for Walmart’s website as well as Jet.com.

But when the pandemic took hold and Walmart started offloading business, Shoes.com was one of those to go.

Private equity firm CriticalPoint Capital LLC acquired reader dotcom in October 2020. In January 2021, CPC said it had integrated Shoes.com into its Running Specialty Group, a footwear and athletic platform that included at JackRabbit era, Olympia Sports and Clever Training. Labels.

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