Since I recently bought myself and m'lady a pair of Lucchese's, I became a bit interested in their business model. Being the consumer retail nerd that I am, I was curious. Here are my findings.
1. The brand image is high end. Someone on here said it's Western meets Prada. Bingo. I started looking at it as a brand like LV rather than just a boot store.
2. They're 100% DTC now. (Direct to Consumer.) They're not in any other retail channels like back in the day. (Cavenders and what not.) Only the website and their owned stores.
3. They're can't seem to build these stores fast enough. I follow them on IG and saw they opened a store over the weekend on South Congress. I knew they already had an Austin store so that made me wonder how many of these they had. 26 stores in seems. All stores are either in the Central of Mountain time zones. Nothing coastal or southern. Makes sense.
4. That made me wonder if they're over building. So, I went over to Glassdoor. (A surprisingly good resource sometimes.) Almost every one of their internal reviews said they're selling so much product, that they're having trouble tracking the inventory. Someone specifically called out the Nashville store saying it was the #2 store in the chain (Dallas likely #1), and they were blowing through so much inventory that they didn't know what they had due to a POS/inventory system that wasn't great. That hit close to home because my wife tried on a pair at the Nashville store and they seemed confused about whether they had her size or not. Meanwhile, there was a constant stream of people coming in there despite it being under renovation.
5. There were endless complaints on Glassdoor about it being chaotic because of the growth. This is common in fast growth brands and companies. The people there likely don't understand that. That's not an insult, it's just more common than you think.
6. Supposedly, as a company, they're selling 750 boots per day and can only make 600. (Glassdoor.)
7. Also according to Glassdoor, the major "pro" from the store people was the clientele. Said they come in with money, don't care about price, and buy lots of stuff. Western Wear makes a comeback every 15-20 years or so and I knew we were in one of those cycles now thanks to Yellowstone. I guess I didn't realize there were rich people with gobs of money walking into one of these stores and saying "I'll take five pair."
Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.....