This article first appeared in our sister publication Shop Eat Surf Outdoor (SESO).
Journeys, one of the largest footwear retailers in the country with over 1,000 stores in North America, has been one of the most important large wholesale accounts for footwear brands for decade. However, leaders of several large industry footwear brands have expressed frustrations with the retailer over the years because they believed Journeys wasn’t evolving, even though good people and good merchants worked there.
“They had a formula that worked for a long time and they stuck to it — but then it ran out of gas,” one leader of a large footwear brand who asked not to be named told SESO. Journeys tended to carry a very limited number of styles from each brand, they said, and did not branch out much. And brand and product storytelling in stores was not a priority.
Now, that formula is changing under new Journeys President Andy Gray, who joined the company in January 2024.
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He and the Journeys team have revamped the merchandising strategy, launched a new store format that updates both the outside and inside of the stores — including adding larger brand callouts of its most important brands in addition to more storytelling — and exited the apparel business to focus on an expanded footwear presentation, and more.
“It’s like they’re now a new, old player,” the footwear brand leader said.
Seeing the Opportunity at Journeys
Gray joined Journeys from Foot Locker, where he spent two decades, including in important roles such as EVP, Global President of Foot Locker, Kids Foot Locker, Champs and Sidestep; EVP, Global Chief Commercial Officer; and VP/GMM of Foot Locker Europe.
He said in an interview with SESO that the Journeys President role intrigued him because the team at Journeys is very respected within the footwear industry. Gray also saw a lot of opportunity, including addressing the underserved female customer segment, particularly in the North American mall landscape, where competition often targets males.
He saw a generational play as well. Modern consumers, especially Gen Z, no longer define themselves by rigid categories like “skater” or “preppy,” he said. Instead, they fluidly change their style based on mood and occasion. Gray recognized Journeys’ ability to offer a product assortment across athletic, casual, vulcanized and fashion footwear to meet these shifting tastes.
“I saw an opportunity to serve a more diverse and generationally evolving consumer base all in one store,” Gray explained. “No one else was bringing it all together, where you can shop different looks without having to go to multiple stores. That was a gap we could fill.”
Enhanced Brand Strategy, Elevating the Product Mix, a Focus on Footwear
When Gray arrived in January 2024, he and the Journeys team did a deep consumer research dive that helped guide the strategy.
“Rather than me coming in with a random point of view, it was like, let’s really look at the marketplace,” he said. “What the research pointed to was opportunities to evolve our assortments, our marketing, our stores.”
For years, Journeys has offered three main categories of footwear — vulcanized (a type of footwear, typically used in skate shoes, where the rubber sole is attached to the upper), casual and athletic.
The team felt it had a strong offering in vulcanized with its Vans and Converse business. They accelerated the casual business by adding more boots, sandals and clogs. And they beefed up the athletic business, which had been on the light side, Gray said, by offering more from partners like New Balance and Adidas and also bringing in new brands like Hoka and Saucony.
Gray described the assortment and rethought store environment as “elevated”: “We worked with our long-term strategic partners to elevate our buys, elevate the assortments and then it was on us to add better storytelling, better content, better merchandising in stores,” he said.
Compared to the Journeys stores of old, shoppers should notice a more focused environment outside of footwear — Journeys is eliminating apparel and streamlining other accessory offerings. And it is expanding its footwear offering by stocking a wider range of styles from anchor brands while also adding fresh brands to the mix.
When asked what the key brands for the new Journeys are, Gray said that in vulcanized, Vans and Converse remain the anchors.
In athletic, New Balance at this particular moment is very big for the chain, and Adidas is a longtime key partner.
“We also do a great business with Puma and ASICS and a ton of other brands in the athletic space,” he added. In casual, key brands include Ugg, Birkenstock, Dr. Martens and Timberland.
Exiting apparel and streamlining its non-footwear offering has opened up space to carry a wider assortment from key brands while adding more brand callouts and storytelling to the stores. “Newness is an important part of our strategy,” Gray said. “Newness can be in the form of new models with existing brands, new executions with existing brands and new brands.”
Changes Appear to Be Working
After two years of negative quarterly comparable sales, Journeys posted its first positive result in two years in the third quarter ended Nov. 2, 2024, when comparable sales jumped 11%. That momentum accelerated in the fourth quarter, with comparable sales increasing 14%.
“Journeys’ performance far outpaced the overall market,” Mimi Vaughn, CEO of Journeys’ parent company Genesco, said on the company’s fourth quarter earnings call.
“It’s very much encouraging to be able to see the impact of the team’s hard work coming through in the results,” Gray said in the SESO interview. “But at the same time, I think what gives me the most comfort is around the plan and the strategy. Retail does have ups and downs, as we know, and I think getting the strategy aligned and adopted and supported internally is a real win in the first year and five months I’ve been here. We’re all singing from the same hymn sheet.”
In addition to revamping and elevating the merchandising strategy, Journeys is also investing in brand building to reach new audiences through digital media, in-store marketing and social media engagement.
A Much-Needed Update to Brick-and-Mortar
I have been visiting Journeys stores for over a decade to keep track of the retailer’s business and how industry brands are evolving in the store. So I was very happy to hear that Journeys has come up with a new store prototype that ditches the multi-colored panels on the exterior and modernizes and elevates the interior.
Journeys moved fast on the new prototype, rolling out 10 last year, with 70 planned for this year.
The results so far have been good, with the new format delivering well above average performance in comps, traffic, conversion and transaction size, Genesco executives said.
Remodeling hundreds of stores will take time, of course, but Gray was especially happy that the new prototype has been working with both existing Journeys customers and new ones.
“Both of those metrics compared favorably to our existing stores,” he said. “So we are very happy with this as an approach and [adding the new format is] absolutely a big part of the plan. We are continuing to work on storytelling and focusing our current stores, and we’re also introducing that new store concept and that will, over time, become a dominant feature.”
He has added two heavy hitters at the Journeys leadership level, including EVP and Chief Merchandising Officer Chris Santaella, who spent three decades at Foot Locker and is very well known in the footwear industry; and EVP and Chief Marketing Officer Stacey Doren, who spent 24 years at Levi’s, most recently as VP of Levi’s Americas Marketing. The rest of the Journeys team largely remains the same, and Gray had high praise for them.
“They’ve got nearly 40 years of experience, great tenure, great respect in the industry,” he said. “Quite often when people think change, they just think people change, and that when [a new leader] comes in, there’s just a rotating door of talent. That’s not what we did. We’ve been very strategic. There are a couple of areas that we’ve added some leadership. But for the rest, we have built off the amazing foundations that we already have.”
