Allen Edmonds Reimagines Iconic Styles for Casual Moment

The Evolution of the Great Dress Shoe

ST. LOUIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Caleres (NYSE: CAL) brand Allen Edmonds has always had a loyal following for its iconic styles – the Park Avenue and the Strand. This fall, the brand has taken both and remixed to make them more suitable for everyday causal wear.

“The Park Avenue has been Allen Edmonds best-selling shoe for over 40 years – in fact we’ve sold over a million pairs since it first hit the market,” said Keith Duplain, senior vice president and general manager heritage brands. “Today our consumers are moving from dress to lifestyle looks – searching for athletic-inspired and hybrid-casual styles – so it made great sense to take both silhouettes into a sneaker cup sole design to match our customers’ needs in this moment.”

The new sneakers launched in September 2020 and are positioned to capitalize on the tremendous opportunity in the active and casual space. These sneakers use the same high-quality leather upper as a standard Park Avenue and Strand designs. And the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

“These two new styles have quickly become our best-selling casual sneakers, routinely outselling their dress counterparts online in recent weeks and are now on back order,” added Duplain.

In this environment, it’s important that brands innovate to find their own distinct casual identity while at the same time staying true to their brand voice. Allen Edmonds pivot to more casual styles is well on its way. Casual styles represent just over 40 percent of Allen Edmonds’s sales – up from when Caleres acquired the brand in late 2016.

Additionally, these sneakers like most Allen Edmonds styles, are recraftable. Customers can send them to the Allen Edmonds Port Washington, WI., factory to be refreshed from the bottom up. A new cup sole will be placed on the sneaker and the leather will be conditioned, keeping the patina earned during wear but refreshed. This recrafting decreases the impact on landfills and currently gives more than 70,000 Allen Edmonds shoes a second or third life each year.

About Caleres

Caleres is the home of today’s most coveted footwear brands and represents a diverse portfolio spanning all of life’s styles and experiences. Every shoe tells a story and Caleres has the perfect fit for every one of them. Our collections have been developed and acquired to meet the evolving needs of today’s assorted and growing global audiences, with consumer insights driving every aspect of the innovation, design, and craft that go into our distinctly positioned brands, including Famous Footwear, Sam Edelman, Naturalizer, Allen Edmonds, Vionic, Dr. Scholl’s Shoes, and more. The Caleres story is most simply defined by the company’s mission: Inspire people to feel great…feet first.