Shoes.com

About Shoes.com

Shoes.com was an online footwear and apparel retailer with a complex history of ownership, acquisitions, and eventual bankruptcy. Originally founded as ShoeBuy in 1999, it was an early entrant in the e-commerce space for shoes. A separate Canadian company, SHOEme.ca, was founded by Sean Clark and Roger Hardy. In 2014, Hardy's firm acquired both SHOEme.ca and the US-based OnlineShoes.com. This new entity then acquired the Shoes.com domain from Brown Shoe Company and rebranded the entire operation as Shoes.com.

The company expanded quickly, at one point employing 250 people, serving 8 million customers, and generating approximately $200 million in annual revenue. However, it struggled with intense competition from giants like Amazon's Zappos, poor customer service, and a management team that reportedly had more technology than fashion industry experience. Despite attempts to innovate with AI-powered shopping tools and opening physical stores in Toronto and Vancouver, the company scaled too quickly and faced financial difficulties.

On January 27, 2017, Shoes.com abruptly ceased all operations, shutting down its websites and brick-and-mortar stores, and subsequently filed for bankruptcy. Following the shutdown, the company's assets were sold off. Walmart acquired the valuable Shoes.com domain name and intellectual property for $9 million to bolster its own footwear e-commerce, redirecting the traffic to its ShoeBuy unit. The domain has since changed hands multiple times, being sold by Walmart to private equity firm CriticalPoint Capital in 2020, and then acquired by Designer Brands Inc., the parent company of DSW, in 2022.