Barn Burner
On the heels of a record year that blazed past the $1billion sales mark, Boot Barn’s growth is just heating up. By Greg Dutter
PSST. Want in on a little secret? Boot Barn is a big business—and it’s poised to get a whole lot bigger. The chain is expected to triple in size over the next 10 years. We’re talking a projected 900 stores in nearly 50 states. But a lot of people—particularly the investment intelligentsia, which largely resides along America’s urban coastlines— don’t have a clue about Boot Barn. Even when informed of the chain’s solid growth, now going on 11 straight years, they remain skeptical. Chalk it up to a coastal bias blind spot, one that prevents them not just from recognizing what a behemoth Boot Barn is fast becoming but also leads them to pooh-pooh the enormous economic significance and social influence of so-called “flyover” country. Not even the fact that Boot Barn just reported having the best year in its 44-year history—one that saw the now 300-store chain total $1.5 billion in sales (fiscal 2022) and every store turn a profit—is enough to make investors take notice. What’s more, comp store sales grew 54 percent and earnings tripled. The Irvine, CA-based company is looking to open roughly 40 to 50 stores a year over the next 10 years, which sets the stage for billions more in annual sales. That expansion includes further market penetration in states where Boot Barn already does well and virgin territory in towns and cities across the country that also live and breathe its merchandise mix. The chain’s destination store format has been updated and is running like a well-oiled machine. Yet, in the days that followed last month’s impressive earnings call, Boot Barn’s stock price actually fell. The general consensus was that a horrendous quarterly report from Target and a slew of other poor retail earnings reports dragged Boot Barn down with them. The retailer was guilty by association. Yet the fact remains that the chain’s numbers were record-smashing. What’s more, comp store sales are up 12 percent this year. Neither the pandemic nor rising inflation have taken the wind out of Boot Barn’s sails/sales. So, forgive Jim Conroy, president and CEO of Boot Barn, for having a bit of a chip on his shoulder. The organization deserves a lot more respect than it gets for what it has achieved and expects to achieve, especially in an age when popular opinion says it can’t be done. Equally irksome to Conroy is the corollary assumption that consumers don’t want to shop in stores—and that they don’t regularly wear western fashion. Wrong on both counts.
Boot Barn’s makeover appeals to core and casual customers alike.
Conroy knows this because he sees it firsthand. He recently visited a Boot Barn location in Weatherford, TX, about 60 miles west of Dallas and found the store (which opened in May of 2021) buzzing with customers shopping the extensive array of functional merchandise as well as “a whole bunch of what can now be viewed as pretty mainstream” apparel. “It’s doing three times its original budget,” Conroy reports. “Now, I can’t put my finger on all the aspects that are working in that store, and whether they’re attributable to internal or outside macro factors, but my sarcastic side says, ‘Yes, it’s a trend, and evidently one that’s been going on for 11 years, because we’ve had 11 years of positive comps.’ But nobody will listen.” Nevertheless, Boot Barn will keep doing what it does best— and keep growing, Conroy assures. The chain is on pace to hit between $2 billion and $3 billion this fiscal year. Perhaps eventually it will win over the doubters and deniers. In the meantime, Boot Barn just doubled its total addressable market to $40 billion. Conroy, for one, sees enormous potential. “We’re miles away from maxing out the growth of our business,” he says, describing Boot Barn as a momentum play. That includes core customers replenishing their wardrobes for work and fashion as well as a growing adjacent customer base that wears the product casually. “We’re just scratching the surface of that Jim Conroy (latter) market potential,” Conroy says. “That’s a giant market
16 footwearplusmagazine.com • june 2022
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