Famous Footwear Completes 350,000-SF Warehouse

LEBEC, CA-Publicly held Brown Shoe Co. has completed a new 350,000-square-foot West Coast distribution center for its Famous Footwear brand at the 1,450-acre Tejon Industrial Complex that will serve approximately one-third of the Famous Footwear chain’s 1,100 locations. The company says that the new distribution center, with an annual capacity of 32 million pairs of shoes and expected inventory turns 17 to 22 times per year, will save time and costs in shipping shoes to an initial distribution area including all Famous Footwear stores located west of the Rocky Mountains.

According to Brown Shoe chairman and CEO Ron Fromm, the new 350,000-square-foot facility will enable the company’s stores and web sites to offer seasonal footwear trends earlier in the season, and to “freshen assortments more frequently.” He adds that the Tejon Ranch location in California’s Central Valley provides logistics, labor and transportation efficiencies.

The Famous Footwear distribution center employs about 75 workers and is expected to create approximately 40 additional jobs in upcoming months. Its initial shipping area will expand later this month to include direct shipping to customers in that geographic area who place orders on FamousFootwear.com.