Shoe Zone's return to a full-year of store trading reaps rewards

By

Nigel TAYLOR

Published
Jan 10, 2023

With trading returning to normal in the post-pandemic period, footwear retailer Shoe Zone has reported “a very positive year” for its full 52 weeks of trading to early October 2022.

It reported positive numbers in Tuesday’s financial statement, despite skewed comparisons, given that previous year's trading in stores was restricted to just 36 weeks.

The increases were “primarily due to the improved revenue and gross profit generated in a normalised trading period post-pandemic,” confirmed CEO Anthony Smith.

It saw stores deliver revenues of £129.8 million for the latest year compared with £88.6 million for the shorter 2021, boosted by strong trading over its key back-to-school period.

Given the shift back to physical retail, digital sales fell 13.5% to £26.4 million from £30.5 million a year ago, in line with management’s post-pandemic expectations, but “continued to be a key part of the business”, it stressed.

Smith added: “We continue to invest in our digital infrastructure with the addition of two automated bagging machines which have significantly improved throughput and productivity. We have redesigned our checkout page and introduced two buy-now-pay-later providers (Klarna and PayPal)”.

The retailer ended the period trading out of 360 stores, having closed 63, opened 13 new stores and converted a further 11 existing locations to its new formats.
 
Profit before tax grew to £13.6 million from £9.5 million last time as profit on an adjusted basis also lifted to and £11.2 million from £9.5 million.

Total capital expenditure rose to £5.2 million from £1.4 million in 2021, of which £3.1million was for refits and its relocation programme.

It also achieved rent reductions on 48 store renewals of £0.6 million (2021: £1.8 million) on an annualised basis, an average reduction of 30%.