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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Shoe Pavilion Headquarters Moves to Valley

Shoe Pavilion Inc., an off-price footwear retailer, has relocated its offices to Sherman Oaks as the company prepares for expansion in the Southern California area. The new location, which consolidates Shoe Pavilion’s Burbank and Northern California offices, currently employs about 35 workers. The bulk of its headquarters operation had been based in Pinole in Northern California, but as the company prepares to open new stores in Southern California executives wanted to be closer to a large labor pool, air transport and a concentration of its stores. “A lot of our unit growth will be occurring in Southern California as far as new stores,” said Neil Watanabe, executive vice president and CFO of Shoe Pavilion, “and we wanted the benefits of having a richer pool of employees to draw on versus Northern California.” Shoe Pavilion is preparing to open 15 or 20 stores in the Southern California area in 2006, said Watanabe. He declined to specify the locations at this time. “We’re planning an aggressive growth plan for our stores over the next several years, so with that will come additional staffing to support our growth,” Watanabe said. Most of the employees in Northern California did not relocate, and Shoe Pavilion has hired most of its staff from the Valley area, Watanabe added. Watanabe too joined the company with the move. A 25-year retail industry veteran, he was formerly CFO at Elizabeth Arden Spas, Petsmart and other retailers. Shoe Pavilion currently operates about 40 stores in Southern California, 11 of them in the greater Valley area including locations in Burbank, Canoga Park, Santa Clarita and Thousand Oaks. It operates a total of about 84 stores in California, Washington, Oregon and Arizona. As the company has grown, it has become more important to provide vendors with easy access to the corporate headquarters, Watanabe said. Accessibility to Burbank Airport was another factor in the decision to relocate. In its most recent quarter ended Dec. 31, Shoe Pavilion reported net sales increased 5.5 percent on a comparable store basis and nearly 19 percent in total. For the full year, the company said comparable store sales increased 6.9 percent and total net sales increased 19.5 percent to $102.5 million. The company’s stock has been on a growth spurt too, with shares currently trading in the mid-$8 range from a low near the $3 range about a year ago.

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