Caleres at 2025 Global Consumer & Retail Conference: Strategic Growth and Challenges

On Wednesday, 08 October 2025, Caleres (NYSE:CAL) presented its strategic vision at the 2025 Global Consumer & Retail Conference. CEO Jay Schmidt and CFO Jack Calandra highlighted the company’s strengths in lead brands and direct-to-consumer channels, while acknowledging challenges such as tariff impacts and inventory management. Caleres is focusing on international growth and leveraging recent acquisitions to enhance its market position.

Key Takeaways

• Caleres is leveraging its strengths in lead brands and direct-to-consumer channels for growth.
• The company is addressing tariff impacts through sourcing diversification and price adjustments.
• The acquisition of Stuart Weitzman is central to Caleres’ strategy for premium positioning and international expansion.
• Famous Footwear’s strategy includes optimizing store footprints and focusing on elevated products.
• Cost savings and synergies are being pursued, with a consulting firm engaged to identify further efficiencies.

Financial Results

• Q2 Performance:

- Lead brands and direct-to-consumer channels outperformed expectations.

- International growth achieved double-digit performance.

- Famous Footwear saw success with brands like Jordan during the back-to-school season.

- Sourcing migration accelerated, reducing China sourcing to below 15%.

- $15 million in annualized structural cost savings anticipated, with half realized in the latter half of the year.

- Stuart Weitzman acquisition completed in August.

• Q3 Guidance (Excluding Stuart Weitzman):

- Famous Footwear: +1% comp in August; comps expected to decline slightly in September and October.

- Brand Portfolio: Gross margin projected to decrease by 240 basis points due to tariffs.

- SG&A: Slight increase expected, offset by restructuring benefits.

Operational Updates

• Sourcing Migration:

- Caleres is actively reducing reliance on China, aiming for less than 15% by year-end.

• Stuart Weitzman Integration:

- Focused on leveraging synergies and preserving the brand’s legacy.

• Famous Footwear Store Optimization:

- Targeting a net decrease of 15-16 stores, ending the year with approximately 830 stores.

• FLAIR Store Performance:

- FLAIR format stores show strong comparative performance.

• Brand Portfolio Channel Strategy:

- Emphasizing omnichannel strength, with digital channels comprising 30% of the portfolio.

• International Growth:

- Sam Edelman is experiencing significant growth, particularly in China.

Future Outlook

• Stuart Weitzman:

- Plans to enhance presence in the contemporary fashion segment with a focus on premium positioning and international expansion.

• International Opportunities:

- Significant growth prospects in China for brands like Sam Edelman and Stuart Weitzman.

• Famous Footwear Strategy:

- Elevating product offerings with successful collaborations, using Jordan as a model.

• Cost Savings:

- Ongoing efforts to identify savings, with integration synergies projected into 2026.

• Tariff Mitigation:

- Continued focus on sourcing diversification and strategic pricing to counter tariff impacts.

• Inventory Management:

- Improving inventory alignment with demand, particularly in the Brand Portfolio segment.

Q&A Highlights

• Footwear Market Trends:

- Demand for new and highly sought-after products is driving the market.

• Caleres Differentiation:

- Expertise in footwear and strong brand positioning with Famous Footwear.

• Brand Portfolio Strategy:

- Investment in lead brands to drive growth through marketing and product initiatives.

• Famous Footwear Strategy:

- Focus on elevated products and popular brands, with Jordan’s success as a model.

• FLAIR Store Expansion:

- Continued expansion of FLAIR format stores, showing favorable performance metrics.

For more detailed insights, readers are encouraged to refer to the full conference call transcript.

Full transcript - 2025 Global Consumer & Retail Conference:

Josh Herity, Softlines Analyst, Tag: All right, let’s get started here. Thank you, everyone, for joining us here today. We’re very pleased to have Caleres here with us for a fireside chat. With us, we have Jay Schmidt, President and CEO. We have Jack Calandra, CFO, and we have Liz Dunn, SVP of Corporate Development and Strategic Communications. I’m Josh Herity. I’m a softlines analyst here at Tag. I’ll hand it over to Liz and company for some opening comments, and then we’ll get our discussion started.

Liz Dunn, SVP of Corporate Development and Strategic Communications, Caleres: Sure. Since this is being webcast, first, just a safe harbor, we will discuss certain forward-looking statements and expectations regarding the company’s future performance. These are subject to certain risks that are detailed in our SEC filings, which you can find on our corporate website at caleres.com. We maintain no obligation to update these at any time. We also may discuss some certain non-GAAP metrics. Those can also be detailed more on our SEC filings on our website. With that, I’ll turn it over to Jay.

Josh Herity, Softlines Analyst, Tag: Okay, so we begin. We see Caleres by the numbers. As you can see, revenue, a lot of, you know, employees there, but our direct-to-consumer is over 70%. Our Brand Portfolio segment is now at 45%, and we operate in 68 countries. They’re probably the newest highlights. Next slide. Just for Q2, these were accomplishments that we called out when we did have our second quarter earnings call. First was the lead brands and direct-to-consumer. These are strategic growth factors for us, and they did outperform in the quarter, as did our international growth. For those who know us, we have significant opportunity here, but we did perform at a double-digit level there. For Famous Footwear, we saw our elevated brands and products really selling well. Jordan, as well as other new additions, did outperform in that back-to-school period.

In addition, on some other key elements, we have accelerated our sourcing migration, and we’re going to see China’s sourcing dollars down to below 15% at the back half of this year. Structural cost savings, $15 million annualized structural savings that we are set to deliver on, and that will be full year. We’ll have about half of that in the back half. We did complete our Stuart Weitzman acquisition. This new lead brand we’re very excited about, we did close in August, and we’re working on the transition period, which will go through the back half of this year.

Jack Calandra, CFO, Caleres: Yeah, and just a couple of things about our second half outlook. Like many other companies, we suspended giving annual guidance just given all the uncertainty around the tariff environment. We did provide some guidance for the second half. I’ll just point out that this excludes our Stuart Weitzman acquisition. We’re obviously still in the process of finalizing things like purchase accounting for that acquisition. These are all what I’ll call the, you know, sort of the legacy Caleres business before the Stuart Weitzman acquisition. Just in terms of our expectations, you know, for Famous Footwear for Q3, we did have a +1% comp in August. August is the largest of the three months in Q3, so we’re very pleased with that. As we move into these more non-promotional, non-holiday periods, we’re expecting sort of comps to be down low single digits in September and October.

That’s pretty consistent with what we’ve seen in those periods year to date. In terms of the Brand Portfolio, we guided gross margin in Q3 down a similar amount to what we saw in Q2, so down about 240 basis points. That’s really all due to the tariff situation. I know Josh will talk a little bit more about the mitigating actions that we’ve taken to address the tariffs, as well as really kind of the lag effect between when those new tariffs have gone into effect and when these mitigating actions really start to show up in our results. We do expect the Q4 trend to improve really as those mitigating actions really start to take hold. On SG&A, we’re expecting a modest increase in our SG&A dollars versus last year. That’s really because, as Jay mentioned, we do have these benefits from the restructuring we’ve done.

We also are anniversarying some reserve releases that we did last year that are sort of masking that. We’ll expect to see more benefits of that in Q4 as we complete that restructuring, which, as Jay said, is structural in nature and $15 million of annualized savings. On the cost savings piece, as part of the Stuart Weitzman acquisition, we are partnering with a consulting firm to really help us drive integration and synergies with that acquisition. We’ve actually expanded their scope to look at some of the other Caleres processes and are very confident that that will deliver additional savings as we go into 2026.

Liz Dunn, SVP of Corporate Development and Strategic Communications, Caleres: Okay, with that, I’ll turn it over to Josh. Let’s get the questions started.

Josh Herity, Softlines Analyst, Tag: Great, thank you. Thank you for that overview. Maybe we can start at big picture, and then we’ll drill down into the businesses. Jay, just curious to get your thoughts on the footwear market today. I think maybe later in the conversation we can talk more about sort of the nuts and bolts of tariff implications, just big picture, what it means for the consumer, what it means for how you’re navigating through the back half of the year.

Jay Schmidt, President and CEO, Caleres: Yeah, so what we’re seeing really drive the footwear market across both segments of our business is really, first, newness, and then secondly, is really driven by products with brand heat and really highly demanded products. This, I would say, movement toward this, what is really happening with these brands and demanded products on both sides of our business is more than we’ve ever seen before. It’s really coming on strong. We’re seeing people really using that as their first point to come in. The brands that are more authentic and more differentiated are breaking through at a higher rate. We’re seeing this in two ways. Our four lead brands continue to outperform and take share within our brand portfolio. Then at Famous Footwear, national and demanded brands and elevated products are performing best.

That’s how we’re seeing it and the consumer is in charge here, but certainly they are really voting for what they want first. So far, that’s really where we’re following them.

Josh Herity, Softlines Analyst, Tag: Excellent. Maybe just talk a little bit about, you know, the Caleres differentiation, your perspective in the marketplace, sort of the vision and growth opportunities that you see within the business.

Jay Schmidt, President and CEO, Caleres: Yeah, we do have, you know, first and foremost, we are footwear experts. We don’t take that for granted. We’ve worked hard at that. In our business right now, we have four leading brands with growing dominance in contemporary right now and fashion. Our leading position remains in shoe chains with Famous Footwear, and it’s showcasing national brands and also a growing number of our own. It gives us a unique vantage point in the marketplace across both athletic and fashion and allows us to pivot within that. Finally, the scale that we have with both segments of our business supports the best-in-class capabilities we have. Those are in design, those are in digital, logistics, marketing, other corporate functions. It would be very hard to, I think, resource properly without that. That’s where we think we do have this differentiated moment and serves as an advantage.

Josh Herity, Softlines Analyst, Tag: Great. Maybe drilling down a little bit more into the business now. We have two segments: Famous Footwear, about 830 stores, you said, with footwear for the entire family, and then the Brand Portfolio business you just touched on, the lead brands, Sam Edelman, Allen Edmonds, Naturalizer, Vionic. You’ve just added Stuart Weitzman as well, but maybe it’d be helpful just to start off with an update on those lead brands as they are key to your portfolio.

Jay Schmidt, President and CEO, Caleres: Yeah, so first of all, I would just say as an update in terms of trend, we’re seeing continued strong progress with Sam Edelman across his wholesale, his digital, and his international business, which is exciting. Allen Edmonds, we’re seeing continue to perform on both wholesale and at retail, also strong and continuing improvement in Naturalizer in their DTC business, and then more continued work on Vionic and improvement in wholesale. We chose these four brands for a reason. They’re positioned to drive growth for us now and for the future. They both have a specific resonance with the consumer that they have and that strongest connection all the way through. The brands are more premium in nature, so they actually perform better. The final thing is we will continue to keep investing in them. You’ll see that through our marketing efforts, our product efforts, and initiatives.

We’re pretty pleased with what we see here right now, obviously coming through even in a tough year.

Josh Herity, Softlines Analyst, Tag: One level below the lead brands, maybe talk a little bit about some of the premium contemporary brand progress, Vince, Veronica Beard, others that are, you know, to call out.

Jay Schmidt, President and CEO, Caleres: Yeah, it’s a very exciting piece of our business right now because the growth, although they’re not owned brands, they’re licensed, but we’re seeing a real strong movement. That happened all the way through last year and continues into this year. It kind of speaks to the whole contemporary segment as a whole. We start out with our Sam Edelman business. You see that strength in Vince and Veronica Beard with the consumer. It really led us, that power there is going to why we chose Stuart Weitzman to come in. What I see here is that it’s a real leadership position in contemporary fashion, but also we see it’s something that’s going to continue for a while. These brands represent an outstanding value proposition relative to designer. From what we hear and what we believe, we are taking share from that space.

It’s a very good space for us, and it’s one that we now have a really strong leadership position in. I’m glad to see that it’s all working there.

Josh Herity, Softlines Analyst, Tag: Right. You touched on Stuart Weitzman. Maybe let’s go there next. Acquisition closed, I believe, just after the second quarter ended. What do you see as the opportunity? What do you see as the sales and the margin potential there, along with the work that you and opportunities you see from an integration and synergies perspective as well?

Jay Schmidt, President and CEO, Caleres: First off, we did choose Stuart Weitzman. It’s an iconic brand with unique resonance with consumers, and it really does align with our strategic areas of focus. That is that premium positioning, strong direct-to-consumer in an international business that is now 30% of their total. The piece of it coming into Caleres is really being able to leverage those capabilities that I discussed while still maintaining that legacy of design, fit, and quality. As you told me, you went right to sales and margin, and we’re not ready to release that yet because we’re still doing that work for the whole back half of this year. When you think about how that comes in, we really see it as really a great fit within our portfolio to really leverage that space that we have with them and allow them to really build strongly.

We’ll have more to share on that when we report our third quarter.

Josh Herity, Softlines Analyst, Tag: Staying in the brand portfolio, you know, inventory management, obviously a challenge here with all of the external disruptions, supply chain issues, tariffs, etc. How do you see, you know, your inventory positioning as we head into the back half of the year and alignment with, you know, current demand levels?

Jack Calandra, CFO, Caleres: Yeah, I’ll start with on the Famous Footwear segment of the business. Inventories are really well managed, with a much tighter relationship between inventory levels and sales. Some of the build that we had in Q2 was for our Jordan launch, which we’ve been really excited about and have exclusivity in that brand in our channel through the end of this year. On Brand Portfolio, that’s where we’ve had a little bit more challenge. Our inventory started the year on the high side. Part of that was just based on, as we were buying that inventory six to nine months out, making those commitments, the sales didn’t materialize as we expected. We’ve been making good progress on that from Q1 to Q2, and now we’re expecting Q3 again, the continued tightening of that sales to inventory spread. I feel good about the path we’re on.

It’s been some work to get us to where we need to be.

Josh Herity, Softlines Analyst, Tag: Gotcha. Still staying within the brand portfolio, I guess, what do you see as the opportunities by channel, both, you know, DTC and wholesale?

Jay Schmidt, President and CEO, Caleres: Yeah, within the brand portfolio, we do believe in an omnichannel approach. We really go where the consumer is going, and we’re well resourced, actually, to do that. That said, the direct-to-consumer business in our brand portfolio is working very well, particularly digitally, but also in the brick-and-mortar stores that we do have. Digital is the largest part of it. It does represent 30% of our brand portfolio right now. Obviously, we love that piece of it because it really is all on us. It’s right. We start from design and we take it all the way to the consumer. We’re very excited. Actually, even going into this August period, we saw that start to happen in the second quarter, now really starting to trend strongly.

That comes from the investment we’re making in marketing and in messaging and connecting with it, but also relying on a very strong basis of product design and really the capabilities we have.

Josh Herity, Softlines Analyst, Tag: Domestic versus international, international has been a strength. What do you see as the growth opportunities in each of those markets?

Jay Schmidt, President and CEO, Caleres: Yeah, we’re going to continue to work on the direct-to-consumer piece of our business as our number one strength. Again, we continue to work with key strategic wholesale partners on our business trend there. Over to international, I should say it is our smallest piece, but it actually has the most runway for us. We’re very excited about what we’re seeing. In Sam Edelman, we’ve seen really outstanding growth across the board in international, particularly with a joint venture partner in China, where we have, I believe, over 100 stores now. In Stuart Weitzman, they have a very strong China business as well as another strong international in Europe. We’re really excited about continuing to build that. It gives us our most potential. Again, we had to have brands that traveled globally.

That’s led us to a lot of the recent acquisitions we’ve made over the years, particularly focused on Stuart right now and then getting that integrated well and then building on Sam Edelman.

Josh Herity, Softlines Analyst, Tag: Let’s shift gears to the Famous Footwear side of the business. Maybe starting a little just high level there, sort of the state of the market, you know, some of the share gains that you’ve seen in certain categories and where you see opportunity.

Jay Schmidt, President and CEO, Caleres: Yeah, so we’re obviously, I’m pleased with the performance that we had on back to school. When we look at the whole period, which starts into July and extends through, it really was a flat comp for the whole period. We had a mid-single digit comp a year ago, so that’s flashing against that. As we discussed, Jordan was the highlight of back to school. I’m really very proud of the whole team for getting that accomplished with us. I do think it’s a differentiating moment for us. First in shoe chains, exclusive for the balance of the year, has exclusive opportunities as we look forward into next year. Mostly, people ask me, was I surprised that it jumped into the top 10 brands? My answer is not at all.

The reason because of that is that our consumers have been demanding it for as many years as I’ve worked here. It was very exciting to see that that demand that keeps coming off of what we saw on our websites on brands that we don’t carry really translated to back to school. We did launch it on July 11th in all stores, all company. We see that as really a build throughout the whole back half of this year into holiday. Bigger discussion is it really is part of a bigger strategy. The bigger strategy is our consumer continues to demand and desire, I would say, more elevated products from brands they love. It is that brands with heat, and Jordan is a perfect example. This will be one of others as we come through. Don’t have anything to specifically announce on that.

For sure, when you look at what’s happened with our business there, it really tells us that this is a path to go for. We’re going to continue to make that offering very strong and famous as we go through. In our FLAIR stores, you’ll see it very much pulled together as a very strong brand statement in that. We learned a lot from that with Jordan, and I think there’s more to come.

Josh Herity, Softlines Analyst, Tag: One of your competitive advantages is the breadth of the brands you offer. What other brands have you seen excitement around or have been outperforming?

Jay Schmidt, President and CEO, Caleres: Yeah, during the period, we did see, I’ll start with Nike. We did see elevated products from them that are somewhat of a differentiator that go out to the full company now. Those are some of the 270 models that we’ve seen, and they’ve sold extremely well, better than some value products. It’s a very interesting moment there. We had very good performance from Adidas, New Balance, Brooks, other athletic brands as we built through. A brand like Birkenstock has been a solid performer straight through the season and continued through back to school, and that represents really one of our highest retails. It certainly was the strength of key athletic brands and products driving through. We’re seeing the rest of those bigger brands in that non-athletic space have similar results. We’re really looking at that as we go forward as building on some of that coming through.

We’ve had the addition of Frye coming in for fall. We have Timberland as a new build here as that yellow boot part of our business continues to grow. Within the brands we have, you’ll see more elevated assortments and demanded products from them. Very excited about it, and I think it really offers us some different thinking and different opportunity at Famous.

Josh Herity, Softlines Analyst, Tag: I think another clear competitive advantage is your kids’ business. My kids love shopping at Famous Footwear. What opportunity do you see to grow the kids’ business? What is the percentage of kids? How do you leverage that platform into the rest of your business?

Jay Schmidt, President and CEO, Caleres: Yes, our kids’ business continues to be a very strong piece. It’s north of 20% to our total, and it did grow for the back-to-school period. Having said that, I think really when I think about our kids’ business, how do we get it really aligned with what are the key brands there? You have kids. I’m sure they all want what their older siblings want and someone else wants. That’s the way life is, you know, right now. We’re really trying to pull that together as a more stronger branded experience. I think, again, more people are coming into that. We offer a full store experience in kids, so that’s something that we really feel is an outperform moment for us and the family. Brands that work in the family for Famous Footwear, they go faster and they grow bigger continually.

Josh Herity, Softlines Analyst, Tag: Just on the store base, you know, what is the potential for new openings, closings? I think you touched on briefly, but the performance of the FLAIR format as well.

Jack Calandra, CFO, Caleres: Yeah, so we, you know, we’ll end the year on Famous with about 830 stores. That’s down 15 or 16 stores. Net 15, 16 store closures versus the end of last year. The good news, obviously, is just given the frequency of lease actions and the ability to relook at leases with sales termination rights and things like that, we’ve got a fair bit of flexibility in terms of making sure that our fleet is right sized. As you mentioned, FLAIR, we will have just under 60 FLAIR stores by the end of this year. Those stores continue to show a nice comp spread versus the base. As you know, we’ve been fairly disciplined about our investment in FLAIR because we’ve been learning as we’ve been going along. Now we feel like we’ve got the right model and the right, you know, criteria for a FLAIR store.

What we’re seeing is even as that latest cohort of FLAIR stores now comps in the second year, they’re still showing that nice difference in terms of a comp spread versus the stores that haven’t been remodeled that way. I feel really good about it. Obviously, you know, we’ll continue down that path.

Josh Herity, Softlines Analyst, Tag: Gotcha. Last couple of minutes here, maybe we can touch on some numbers a little bit. I know you haven’t provided guidance in line with most of your peers as well, but just sort of bigger picture, you know, how do we think about navigating tariffs and the financial impact of tariffs as we head through the back half of the year and into 2026?

Jack Calandra, CFO, Caleres: Yeah, so with tariffs, we’ve really employed a multi-prong strategy. I would remind everyone that we’re looking at tariff increases for our source countries at generally 20% to 30%. Obviously, that’s come in two different tranches, one back in February and then one in August. In terms of the strategy we’ve pursued, one is looking at our source mix of countries. As we mentioned earlier, China, which is one of the higher tariff rates, is now down to less than 15% of our dollar receipts in the back half. That’s one thing. Second thing is we’ve been having very productive and fruitful conversations with our factory partners in getting them to provide concessions to help with that cost increase. Third is we’ve looked at the dutyable value of goods, right?

Things like, let’s say, freight from the factory to the port, which may have been part of what was dutyable before. We’re trying to strip some of those things out, pay those separately so that they are excluded from that increased tariff rate. Obviously, price increases, and we’re being very selective and surgical about that, but that’s the fourth element of the mitigation. I would say those four things, I think really depending on how the consumers react to the price increases, may or may not be able to offset the full gross margin impact from those higher tariffs, which is why we’re also looking at these SG&A opportunities so that we can make sure that from an EBIT perspective, we fully have offset the impact of the tariffs.

Josh Herity, Softlines Analyst, Tag: Great. I think that just wraps up our time there. That was a great recap for the end. I want to thank Caleres very much for being here with us today, and thank you, everyone, for joining us.

Jay Schmidt, President and CEO, Caleres: Thank you.

Jack Calandra, CFO, Caleres: Thank you.

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