J. Baker stepping lively with upscale division - Apparel Merchandising

Discount Store News, Feb 21, 1994

J Baker just keeps trekking on. After quadrupling its sales to more than $900 million in the last five years, the specialty footwear and apparel retailer is adding an upscale side to its shoe business and looking to break the $1 billion mark in '94.

The growth follows the acquisition last fall of Tishkoff Enterprises Inc., a company that operated leased shoe departments in discount, specialty and department specialty and department stores. TEI, which was purchased with 68,000 shares of J. Baker common stock and about $1 million in cash, has been renamed Shoe Corp. of America, or SCOA, and will function as the newly formed department store division of J. Baker.

Jerry Socol, president and ceo of J. Baker, says the acquisition opens up new markets that until now have not been available to a company that had centered its shoe business on the discount trade. "Anybody that wants to lease their shoe business can now be handled in one of two divisions," he says.

He notes that TEI/SCOA, thanks in large part to growth last year at client stores Goody's and Younkers, finished the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31 with $70 million in sales. Combined with internal sales growth at J. Baker, that lifted J. Baker over $900 million.

SCOA will handle from its Columbus, Ohio-based headquarters all partial and full-service licensed shoe department clients, including Nashville-based Goody's, Des Moines, Iowa-based Younkers and Atlanta-based Upton's. Former TEI client Rich's Department Stores, a Massachusetts-based discounter, will be handled by the mass market operation at J. Baker's headquarters in Canton, Mass.

SCOA is headed by former TEI head Dennis Tishkoff, who reports to Socol.

This is the second acquisition made in the past year by J. Baker, which also owns and operates retails shoe and apparel stores. In 1993, it acquired rival leased department operator Morse Shoe Co. Now, with TEI under its laces, J. Baker operates as a dominant player in the leasing business throughout the United States, except for areas of the Southwest and West Coast. Soco, meanwhile, says he's keeping his eyes open in those areas, too.