DSW History

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The Company Description of Its Time

DSW Inc. is filed in its Apparel Search profile as a leading branded footwear specialty retailer that offers a wide selection of brand name and designer dress, casual and athletic footwear for women and men. The scale figures are dated, as this page keeps them: as of April 15, 2010, DSW operated 308 stores in 39 states and an e-commerce site at dsw.com, and also supplied footwear to 356 leased locations in the United States. The shopper proposition is stated in the brand's own terms: DSW is the shoe shopping destination for style-conscious women and men who appreciate value, with thousands of shoes, great prices and an ever-changing inventory, in a treasure-filled environment its loyal shoppers - encouraged by the award winning loyalty program DSW Rewards - call addictive.

The DSW Time Capsule: April 2006

Unusually, the filing keeps its own earlier description as a labelled time capsule - one of its most valuable passages - a primary record of the format at its height. Here is the description that was on Apparel Search in April 2006: since its inception in 1991, DSW has evolved into a distinctive retail concept that allows customers to personalise their shopping experience by offering a breathtaking assortment of shoes that are instantly accessible, easy to shop, and fulfill a broad range of style and fashion desires. Typical DSW stores have over 30,000 pairs of shoes in more than 2,000 styles displayed on the selling floor. Their vast selection assures customers that they are highly likely to find styles they are seeking in the size they need.

The capsule continues with the service model: their self service format allows customers to view, touch and try on the product to their heart's content, and with weekly deliveries of new styles, there is always something to discover. DSW provides customers with high-quality brands and in-season fashions at everyday prices that are competitive with the typical sale price found at specialty retailers and department stores. Read against the 2010 figures above it, the capsule explains the mechanism the store count expresses: open stock on the floor, self-service trying, breadth measured in tens of thousands of pairs, and prices benchmarked not against list but against competitors' sale prices. The 1991 inception date lives only in this capsule, and it is kept here with its 2006 framing intact rather than promoted into the profile's headline facts.

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