Our Strategy

Consumer Connections

Every element of our business strategy is centered on meeting the needs of our customers. In order to understand our consumer segments, we leverage best-in-class consumer insights to continually anticipate trends and increase our relevance to their lifestyles. These insights allow us to build brands, product lines and marketing support to meet the varied needs of each of our customer segments.

We also focus on creating an outstanding shopping experience at each of our consumer touchpoints. In our stores, we create an engaging, inspiring store experience with outstanding customer service. Online, we are leveraging the latest technology platforms to create a more personalized shopping experience and quicker response times for our customers, allowing for faster shopping and speedier checkout.

Powerful Brands

At Collective, we understand that brands, like shoes, are not one-size-fits-all businesses. We have built a diverse portfolio of iconic brands that are targeted to specific consumer segments. Through each brand’s unique personality and focus on varying lifestyle needs, we are able to forge strong emotional connections and build effective marketing programs that support and amplify our brand messaging to communicate effectively with our customers. Learn more about our brand portfolio.

Operational Excellence

We maintain a strong, ongoing strategic focus on operational excellence. We continue to develop our capabilities to execute core operational processes at a best-in-class level. Beginning with consumer insights and cascading through every stage of our product development – including product creation, branding, supply chain and logistics – we leverage our scale through shared platforms and integrated systems tailed to our individual brand and business needs.

Our vertically integrated, highly efficient supply chain includes new distribution centers that improve speed-to-market, better serve our stores and our customers, and reduce transportation costs. 

We’ve also built talented teams at Collective Brands across all of our business units, who have blazed new trails that have led the company to where it is today, and who share a vision of where we can take Collective Brands in the future.  We are committed to motivating and engaging our associates and delivering opportunities for strong career paths and ongoing growth and development.

Dynamic Growth

Collective Brands has a presence in nearly 100 countries and territories around the world.  We are focused on fully extending the reach of our brand platforms across global markets to deliver our products to new customers in new geographies with well-defined distribution strategies.

We also look for opportunities to expand our brands into other relevant categories from our traditional base.  Whether its expanding into apparel and new products like minimalism/natural motion at Saucony, adding new accessory categories at Payless, or increasing our focus and product assortment for women through fashion at Sperry, we continually look for ways to deepen our relationships and grow our brands and products in relevant ways to our consumers.

And finally, we will continue to make investments to build out our delivery channels:  retail, wholesale, licensing, franchising and ecommerce, while growing and strengthening our brand portfolio.  We will leverage consumer insights to ensure our stores are located in the most convenient locations for our customers, create fun, personalized shopping environments on our ecommerce sites, and build relationships with partners through our wholesale and licensing channels to take our brands to the best retailers.