Delivering a remarkable shoe shopping experience.

Exceeding expectations for style and comfort!

Brown Shoe Company is a global footwear retailer that inspires people to look and feel good every day, with a compelling portfolio of loved and trusted brands. They put more than 100 million pairs of shoes on the feet of women, men and kids around the world each year through partnerships with department stores, national chains and independent retailers on behalf of their footwear brands, as well as their retail stores, catalogs and e-commerce sites. Brown Shoe maintains global operations in St. Louis, New York, Dongguan, Italy and Brazil in order to bring a truly worldwide perspective to their business.

Brown Shoe is successful and is a supply chain leader. Inthe past, Brown Shoe has used the traditional approach to their distribution network – disparate providers including consultants, material handling manufacturers and system providers. As Brown continued to raise the bar in retailing, they reinvested in how to manage fashion, improve inventory productivity, improve time to market and improve margins. Brown also challenged that the speed and benefits needed to be realized faster…no surprises, no delays, no excuses for not hitting the ROI..

They now believe in Fortna’s Integrated Delivery Model. Since the new distribution network was established, better approaches have evolved that are delivering better results. Brown researched, validated and tested the “new and better approach” from Fortna. This approach is designed to dramatically improve time to benefit at the lowest total delivered costs.

This is done by eliminating the problems with the traditional approach:

High change orders
High surprises
Finger Pointing
Silo’d approach to real estate, inventory, material handling, IT, operations and people

Fortna and Brown are a team on the business case

“Fortna has been a true partner to Brown Shoe, and expanding our relationship with them to include the west coast distribution center will enable us to meet the needs of our customers more efficiently and effectively,” said Robert Stadler, Senior Vice President, Logistics for Brown Shoe. “Fortna brought a team of experts to help with the integrated design and implementation efforts.”

“We are excited about the efficiencies and flexibility that are built into the new facility, which will reduce operating costs as well as ensure the customers in our stores have the right shoes at the right time,” added Jerry Essex, Vice President, Retail Logistics for Brown Shoe.

The Bottom Line: The new Brown Shoe - Famous Footwear facility in Tejon Ranch, California came in

Ahead of schedule and Under Budget....A Perfect Fit!