What it is
Shoe Palace was a city specialty footwear chain with stores across California, Nevada, Texas, Arizona and Hawaii. In Khounlavong's City Specialty rollout plan of February 2016 it sat in the running focused account group, and it was the account chosen for the pilot assortment.
In March 2016 he took the account itself, together with Hibbett Sports, as his third marketplace assignment. The account still bought from category catalogs. The plan was to move it to assortments built for clusters of stores, sized to the space each store had.
What Khounlavong did
- Partnered with sales and started the Shoe Palace marketplace merchandising strategy. His fiscal 2016 review records it in those words.
- Set the work zones for the account in April 2016: educate on the growth strategy, align on focus categories, develop the door cluster strategy, decide where to invest, divest and harvest, and define muse doors and capacity.
- Planned a business meeting with the account in the Bay Area for June 2016, to present the new strategy, align on muse doors and begin the cluster and capacity conversation.
- Set three door cluster tiers in the account deck of June 30, 2016: Pinnacle, Statement and Balance of Chain.
- Named three muse doors: Hollywood and Highland, Melrose and Cerritos. Hollywood and Highland was the Pinnacle muse door. A muse door is the one store an assortment is planned against.
- Asked the retailer for floor plans for each muse door with counts of footwear panels and apparel fixtures, current product counts in total and by category, and a commitment to distribute and track.
- Set the assortment timeline. Spring and summer 2017 stayed on catalogs by category. Fall and holiday 2017 added the first muse door assortment, for Hollywood and Highland, and footwear catalogs by cluster. Spring and summer 2018 added a balance of chain assortment.
- Told the account what the plan was not. His note read: "This new strategy is NOT a top door strategy." Nike would hold a point of view on the best doors, and the strategy was about the stores below them.
- Built a Product Story Roadmap for the account, mapping product stories by month from summer to holiday 2016 with units and doors for each.
Results
- Khounlavong's fiscal 2016 review marks the goal "Build Door Cluster Framework" as completed. It lists the muse door and assortment strategy at Hibbett and Shoe Palace as in process at year end.
- His fiscal 2017 review says of these months that merchandising frameworks were created and account specific strategies were implemented.
- The first Shoe Palace assortment was scheduled for fall 2017. Khounlavong moved to Men's Running in September 2016. No sell-through result is recorded.
At a glance
| Project type | Door clustering and account assortment strategy |
|---|---|
| Industry | Athletic footwear, city specialty retail |
| Seat | Marketplace Merchandising Director |
| Ran through | Nike |
| Dates | March 2016 to September 2016 |
| Related pages | Jimmy Khounlavong, Nike Marketplace Merchandising: four assignments in nine months, Hibbett Sports: a door cluster framework built on the retailer's own three store types |
| Principal | Jimmy Khounlavong |