Skechers to add millions of sq ft of logistics space amid e-commerce rise

Skechers is shaping up its fulfillment capabilities after a jump in e-commerce sales.

The footwear brand plans to more than double its pre-pandemic warehousing and logistics footprint by next summer, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Skechers owned and operated around 4 million square feet of space before the pandemic, and it’s already well on its way toward meeting its goal, growing its distribution space to 5.5 million square feet by the end of the last year.
The company was already expanding its footprint before last year, but paused its expansions as the pandemic interrupted supply chains in India.

CFO John Vandemore said the company has experienced higher demand than expected in recent months.

“What we’ve seen is a tremendous rebound in demand, which really puts us back on the growth trajectory we were experiencing pre-pandemic,” Vandemore told the Journal. “Once we got confident that we were going to return to our growth trajectory, we absolutely were going to need that capacity.”

The company reported $1.66 billion in sales in the second quarter of this year, more than twice its sales from the same period last year. Net income figured out to $137.4 million for the quarter, compared to a net loss of $68.1 million in the second quarter last year.

Skechers will have plenty of competition for industrial space as other retailers similarly look to expand their e-commerce capabilities.

Amazon alone has leased millions of square feet of warehouse space across the country over the last year.

[WSJ] — Dennis Lynch