Rack Room Shoes (Deichmann US)

Rack Room Shoes is a major American footwear retailer headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Deichmann SE, Europe's largest footwear retailer. Founded in 1922 in Salisbury, North Carolina by Phil Levinson under the name "Phil's Shoe," the company evolved through family ownership via son-in-law Mort Lerner who renamed it Lerner's Shoes before it became Rack Room Shoes. The company pioneered the self-service footwear retail concept in the early 1980s, allowing customers to browse stock kept in plain view rather than relying on sales staff to retrieve sizes from stockrooms, reducing labor costs and enabling competitive discount pricing. In 1984, Rack Room Shoes was acquired by the German Deichmann Group as part of their international expansion strategy, becoming the largest subsidiary in Deichmann's global portfolio with approximately 4,000 employees. Operating over 500 stores across 36 states under the Rack Room Shoes and Off Broadway Shoe Warehouse brands, the company serves diverse markets with footwear for women, men, and children across athletic, comfort, and dress categories, plus accessories, backpacks, shoe care items, and socks. The company's business model combines national brand merchandise with private label footwear brands including Bjorndal, Bluefin, Cupcake Couture, Xappeal, Limelight, and Michael by Michael Shannon. Under Deichmann ownership, Rack Room Shoes experienced significant expansion from 100 stores in 1990 to over 500 locations today, with corporate headquarters relocated to a state-of-the-art 72,000 square foot facility in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1995. As part of the Deichmann Group, which generates €8.7 billion in global revenue and employs 49,900 people across 34 countries, Rack Room Shoes benefits from the purchasing power and operational expertise of Europe's footwear retail market leader while maintaining its distinctly American brand identity and market positioning in the competitive US discount footwear segment alongside rivals such as Payless ShoeSource and Shoe Show Inc.