GENESCO INC

General

Genesco Inc., incorporated in 1934 in the State of Tennessee, is a leading retailer and wholesaler of branded footwear, apparel and accessories with net sales for Fiscal 2024 of $2.3 billion. During Fiscal 2024, we operated four reportable business segments (not including corporate): (i) Journeys Group, comprised of the Journeys®, Journeys Kidz® and Little Burgundy® retail footwear chains and e-commerce operations; (ii) Schuh Group, comprised of the Schuh retail footwear chain and e-commerce operations; (iii) Johnston & Murphy Group, comprised of Johnston & Murphy® retail operations, e-commerce operations and wholesale distribution of products under the Johnston & Murphy® brand; and (iv) Genesco Brands Group, comprised of the licensed Dockers®, Levi's®, and G.H. Bass® brands, as well as other brands we license for footwear. We also source, design, market and distribute footwear under our Johnston & Murphy brand and the licensed Levi's, Dockers and G.H. Bass brands, as well as other brands that we license for footwear to over 1,000 retail accounts in the United States, including a number of leading department, discount, and specialty stores as well as e-commerce retailers.

At February 3, 2024, we operated 1,341 retail footwear and accessory stores located primarily throughout the United States and in Puerto Rico, including 77 footwear stores in Canada and 122 footwear stores in the United Kingdom ("U.K.") and the Republic of Ireland ("ROI"). We plan to open a total of approximately 14 new retail stores and to close approximately 52 retail stores in Fiscal 2025.

The following table sets forth certain additional information concerning our retail footwear and accessory stores during the five most recent fiscal years:

Shorthand references to fiscal years (e.g., “Fiscal 2024”) refer to the fiscal year ended on the Saturday nearest January 31st in the named year (e.g., February 3, 2024). Fiscal 2024 is a 53-week year and Fiscal 2023 and 2022 are 52-week years. The terms "Company," "Genesco," "we," "our" or "us" as used herein and unless otherwise stated or indicated by context refer to Genesco Inc. and its subsidiaries. All information contained in Item 7, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” which is referred to in this Item 1 of this report, is incorporated by such reference in Item 1.

Strategy

Across our company, we aspire to create and curate leading footwear brands that represent style, innovation and self-expression and to be the destination for our consumers' favorite fashion footwear. Each of our businesses has a strong strategic position grounded in a deep and ever-evolving understanding of the customers it serves. We strive to build enduring relationships with our target customers, based upon unparalleled consumer and market insights. We seek to excite and constantly exceed customer expectations by delivering distinctive experiences and products, using our deep direct-to-consumer expertise across digital and physical channels. The strength of our concepts and the advantages we have built over time have established long-lasting leadership positions that make our footwear businesses outstanding on their own, but what they share through the benefit of synergies makes them even stronger together. We have aligned our footwear focused strategy around six pillars aimed at accelerating our transformation and leveraging synergies to drive growth and sustainable profitability, 1) accelerate digital to grow direct-to-consumer, 2) maximize the relationship between physical and digital channels, 3) build deeper consumer insights to strengthen customer relationships and brand equity, 4) intensify product innovation and trend insight efforts, 5) reshape the cost base to reinvest for future growth, and 6) pursue synergistic acquisitions that add growth and create shareholder value. We anticipate continuing to optimize our store footprint in the future, concentrating on locations that we believe will be most productive, as well as closing certain stores, perhaps reducing the overall square footage and store count from current levels, but improving productivity in our existing locations and investing in technology and infrastructure to support omni-channel and digital retailing.

We have made acquisitions, including the acquisitions of the Schuh Group in June 2011, Little Burgundy in December 2015 and Togast in January 2020. We expect to concentrate our efforts on opportunities to leverage our direct-to-consumer capabilities to grow our branded platform and leverage its strategies at the appropriate time going forward.

More generally, we attempt to develop strategies to mitigate the risks we view as material, including those discussed under the caption “Forward Looking Statements,” above, and those discussed in Item 1A, "Risk Factors". Among the most important of these factors are those related to consumer demand. Conditions in the economy can affect demand, resulting in changes in sales and, as prices are adjusted to drive sales and manage inventories, in gross margins. Because fashion trends influencing many of our target customers can change rapidly, we believe that our ability to react quickly to those changes has been important to our success. Even when we succeed in aligning our merchandise offerings with consumer preferences, those preferences may affect results by, for example, driving sales of products with lower average selling prices or products which are more widely available in the marketplace and thus more subject to competitive pressures than our typical offering. Moreover, economic factors, such as inflation, the collateral effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain disruptions and increased logistics costs, and any future economic contraction and changes in tax policies, may reduce the consumer’s disposable income or his or her willingness to purchase discretionary items, and thus may reduce demand for our merchandise, regardless of our skill in detecting and responding to fashion trends. We believe our experience and discipline in merchandising and the buying power associated with our relative size and importance in the industry segments in which we compete are important factors in our ability to mitigate risks associated with changing customer preferences and other changes in consumer demand.

Segments

Journeys Group

The Journeys Group accounted for 59% of our net sales in Fiscal 2024. Journeys retail footwear stores target customers in the 13 to 22 year age group through the use of youth-oriented decor and multi-channel media. Journeys stores carry predominately branded merchandise across a wide range of prices. The Journeys Kidz retail footwear stores sell footwear and accessories primarily for younger children, toddler age to 12 years old. Little Burgundy retail footwear stores sell footwear and accessories to fashion-oriented men and women in the 21 to 34 year age group ranging from students to young professionals.

At February 3, 2024, Journeys Group operated 1,063 stores, including 808 Journeys stores, 222 Journeys Kidz stores and 33 Little Burgundy stores averaging approximately 2,050 square feet, located primarily in malls and factory outlet centers throughout the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada, selling footwear and accessories for young men, women and children. Journeys Group's e-commerce websites include the following: journeys.com, journeyskidz.com, journeys.ca and littleburgundyshoes.com. In Fiscal 2024, the Journeys Group closed a net of 67 stores.

Schuh Group

The Schuh Group accounted for 21% of our net sales in Fiscal 2024. Schuh Group stores target teenagers and young adults in the 16 to 24 year age group, selling a broad range of branded casual and athletic footwear along with a meaningful private label offering. At February 3, 2024, Schuh Group operated 122 Schuh stores, averaging approximately 4,950 square feet, which include both street-level and mall locations in the U.K. and the ROI. Schuh Group's e-commerce websites are schuh.co.uk, schuh.ie and schuh.eu. In Fiscal 2024, Schuh Group closed a net of zero stores.

Johnston & Murphy Group

The Johnston & Murphy Group accounted for 14% of our net sales in Fiscal 2024. All sales of Johnston & Murphy Group's retail and wholesale businesses are of the Genesco-owned Johnston & Murphy brand.

Johnston & Murphy Retail Operations. At February 3, 2024, Johnston & Murphy operated 156 retail shops and factory stores primarily in the United States averaging approximately 1,950 square feet and selling footwear, apparel and accessories primarily for men in the 25 to 55 year age group. Johnston & Murphy retail shops are located primarily in higher-end malls and airports nationwide and sell a broad range of men’s casual and dress footwear, apparel and accessories. Women’s footwear and accessories are sold in select Johnston & Murphy locations. We also sell Johnston & Murphy products directly to consumers through johnstonmurphy.com and johnstonmurphy.ca e-commerce websites. Footwear accounted for 55% of Johnston & Murphy retail sales in Fiscal 2024, with the balance consisting primarily of apparel and accessories. Johnston & Murphy Group closed a net of two shops and factory stores, including one factory store in Canada, in Fiscal 2024.

Johnston & Murphy Wholesale Operations. Johnston & Murphy men’s and boy's footwear, apparel and accessories, along with women's footwear are sold at wholesale, primarily to better department stores, independent specialty stores and e-commerce retailers. Johnston & Murphy’s wholesale customers offer the brand’s footwear for dress, dress casual, and casual occasions, with the majority of styles offered in these channels selling from $100 to $195.

Genesco Brands Group

The Genesco Brands Group segment accounted for 6% of our net sales in Fiscal 2024. Genesco Brands Group designs and sources licensed footwear under the Levi's, Dockers and G.H. Bass brand names, among others. The Levi's brand license and the G.H. Bass brand license were entered into concurrently with the Togast acquisition. We design and source Levi's branded footwear and market it to men, women and children through department and specialty stores and off-price retailers across the country as well as e-commerce retailers. Suggested retail prices for Levi's footwear generally range from $35 to $100. Dockers footwear is marketed to men aged 30 to 55 through many of the same national retail chains that carry Dockers pants and sportswear and in department and specialty stores across the country. Suggested retail prices for Dockers footwear generally range from $40 to $90. In the fourth quarter of Fiscal 2022, we signed a three-year licensing agreement with STARTER to be their exclusive U.S. and Canadian footwear licensee for athletic footwear. We design and manufacture the STARTER brand footwear for men, women and children with suggested retail prices ranging from $49 to $120. In the second quarter of Fiscal 2023, we signed a three-year licensing agreement with PONY to be their exclusive U.S. footwear licensee for athletic footwear for men, women and children with suggested retail prices ranging from $75 to $250, including a Limited Edition 50th anniversary version for $250. Genesco Brands Group e-commerce websites are nashvilleshoewarehouse.com and dockershoes.com.

Manufacturing and Sourcing

We rely on independent third-party manufacturers for production of our footwear products sold at Johnston & Murphy Group and Genesco Brands Group. We source footwear and accessory products from foreign manufacturers located in Brazil, Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Mexico, Pakistan, Portugal, Peru, Spain, Turkey and Vietnam. Our Journeys Group and Schuh Group businesses sell primarily branded products from third parties who source primarily overseas.

Competition

Competition is intense in the footwear, apparel and accessory industries. Our retail footwear, apparel and accessory competitors range from small, locally owned stores to regional and national department stores, discount stores, specialty chains, our vendors with their own direct-to-consumer channels and online retailers. We also compete with hundreds of footwear wholesale operations in the United States and throughout the world, most of which are relatively small, specialized operations, but some of which are large, more diversified companies. Some of our competitors have resources that are not available to us. Our success depends upon our ability to remain competitive with respect to the key factors of style, price, quality, comfort, brand loyalty, customer service, store location and atmosphere, technology, infrastructure and speed of delivery to support e-commerce and the ability to offer relevant products.

Licenses

We own our Johnston & Murphy®brand and own or license the trade names of our retail concepts either directly or through wholly-owned subsidiaries. The Dockers® footwear line, introduced in Fiscal 1993, is sold under a license agreement granting us the exclusive right to sell men’s footwear under the trademark in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. The current Dockers license agreement expires in 2024 and is currently expected to be renewed through 2027. We entered into a new license agreement with Levi Strauss & Co. in January 2020 for the right to sell men's, women's and children's footwear under the Levi's®trademark in the United States and the Caribbean. The initial term of the license agreement with respect to Levi's® trademarks was through November 30, 2024 with one potential additional four-year renewal term. We have agreed with Levi Strauss & Co. that we will not renew the license for four years, but will instead extend the license under modified terms through at least February 2026 and accept other consideration. We entered into a new license agreement for STARTER athletic footwear in September 2021. The initial term of the license is three years with a three-year renewal option, which would extend the partnership through December 31, 2027. We entered into a new license agreement for PONY athletic footwear in June 2022. The initial term of the license is three years with a three-year renewal option, which would extend the partnership through June 2028. We license certain other footwear brands, mostly in foreign markets. License royalty income was not material in Fiscal 2024.

Wholesale Backlog

Most of the orders in our wholesale divisions are for delivery within 150 days. Historically, most of our business has been at-once, and as a result, the backlog at any one time has not necessarily been indicative of future sales. As of March 2, 2024, our wholesale operations had a backlog of orders, including unconfirmed customer purchase orders, amounting to approximately $49.0 million, compared to approximately $72.7 million as of February 25, 2023. The decline is primarily due to the planned decline in value channel orders for the Genesco Brands Group business driven by the Levi's license. The backlog is somewhat seasonal, reaching a peak in the Spring.

Environmental, Social and Governance ("ESG") Initiatives

As a leading retailer and wholesaler of branded footwear, apparel and accessories, we strive to make a positive impact on our industry, our communities and our planet by committing to transparent, socially conscious, and sustainable business practices. We believe that our ESG practices should serve all of our stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers and business partners.

During Fiscal 2024, we completed our second measurements or baselines for our greenhouse gas emissions. We issued our initial corporate sustainability report in Fiscal 2023 and have followed up with subsequent ESG infographic updates, all of which can be found at www.genesco.com. Our website address is provided as an inactive textual reference only. The information provided on our website is not a part of this report, and therefore is not incorporated herein by reference.

Environmental

We are committed to reducing our impact on the environment by focusing on sustainability initiatives in our operations and throughout our supply chain and product lifecycle. To this end, in Fiscal 2022, we joined the Leather Working Group ("LWG"). The LWG is a not-for-profit organization responsible for the world's leading environmental certification for the leather manufacturing industry. As a member of the LWG, we apply holistic practices in the supply chain for leather manufacturing for our third-party manufacturers.

We also monitor chemicals and substances in our supply chain for compliance with legal and regulatory requirements consistent with our Environmental Policy and expect our contracted factories and suppliers to take a proactive stance in eliminating any hazardous chemicals or substances in the manufacture of our products.

Human Capital

Our Employees

We had approximately 18,000 employees as of February 3, 2024 with approximately 14,000 employed in the United States and Canada, and approximately 4,000 in the U.K. and the ROI. The majority of our workforce consists of retail-based, customer-facing employees with approximately 70% part-time and 30% full-time as of February 3, 2024.

We consider our employees to be core to our success. Our values include treating our customers and each other with integrity, trust and respect, and creating an unrivaled home for talent to grow and succeed.

Workplace Health & Safety

We conduct health and safety training with our retail and distribution employees to build knowledge and awareness of workplace conditions and hazards according to local, regional and national standards.

Benefits and Compensation

We offer a comprehensive benefits package designed to meet the diverse needs of our employees and their families. This package includes many benefits dedicated to our employees’ physical and mental health and well-being as well as benefits designed to help employees build wealth and prepare for the future.

We also provide valuable benefits and protections based on the unique needs and interests of each individual employee such as domestic partner benefits, parental leave, adoption benefits, family building benefits, paid time for community service, financial assistance with emergencies, scholarship opportunities, matching gift contributions and a generous product discount.

Our compensation programs are designed to attract, retain and motivate employees. We provide short-term and long-term incentives to encourage and reward superior performance and also drive long-term shareholder value. We engage a nationally recognized outside compensation consulting firm to independently evaluate the effectiveness of our executive compensation programs and to provide benchmarking against our peers within the industry.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

We are committed to our diversity, equity, and inclusion ("DEI") efforts to continually strengthen our talent and to make a meaningful difference for our employees, our customers, and our communities.

We have enhanced our commitment to DEI by building on our solid foundation. Through our DEI Council and defined vision, we are focusing our attention on areas where we can make the most impact – our talent, our business practices and our communities. We have identified opportunities that will advance our DEI efforts across our portfolio of brands, including expanded training and development programs, pay equity studies, the launch of Business Resource Groups and ongoing engagement through communication and events.

Employee Engagement

We conduct annual employee engagement surveys as well as other targeted surveys with various segments of our workforce to measure important aspects of the employee experience. The survey measures employee sentiment on a variety of topics including leadership, management, alignment, involvement, respect in the workplace, learning and development, social connection and work life balance, among others. The survey creates the opportunity to establish two-way communication and gives employees a direct voice in influencing change. Our results indicate high participation rates and strong engagement scores. We remain committed to listening to and learning from our employees.

Training and Development

We provide employees with the opportunity to grow their careers and be rewarded for their contributions. We have a strong promote from within culture and target training and development that is relevant to an employee’s current role as well as future roles to which they aspire.

Social Capital

We are committed to responsible sourcing practices in our supply chain. We depend on third-party vendors to produce the products we sell but strive to work only with those vendors who share our commitment to responsible practices, especially in their relationships with employees and their stewardship of the environment. Our supply chain and ethical practices policies are among the ways we seek to implement this commitment. During Fiscal 2024, we published our inaugural Vendor Code of Conduct policy.

In 2021, we published a comprehensive human rights policy with its commitment to respecting human rights and belief in fundamental standards that support our commitment to treat our employees, customers and business partners with integrity, trust and respect. Our human rights policy addresses our internal business ethics and code of conduct policies and principles embedded in our business operations, and is guided by the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for Multi National Enterprises.

Information Security and Cybersecurity

As part of our retail and wholesale activities, marketing campaigns, customer relationship efforts and use of some third-party partners, we may handle and process certain non-public personal information that customers provide to purchase products, enroll in promotional or marketing programs, register on websites, or otherwise communicate to us in the course of providing support. This may include phone numbers, email addresses, physical addresses, contact preferences, personal information stored on electronic devices, and certain payment related information, including credit and debit card data. We have removed the transmission, processing, and storage of credit card data from our environment in North America through the use of hardware based end-to-end encryption along with tokenization.

We gather and retain information about our employees only as necessary to fulfill our responsibilities as an employer. We may share information about such persons with benefit and/or employee services vendors that assist with certain aspects of our human resources offering.

We maintain controls and safeguards to mitigate the risks to our systems and to protect this information and have made significant investments to improve our information security and privacy posture and keep pace with the ever changing and evolving risks to our systems and our information. For example, we have implemented hardware based end-to-end encryption with tokenization, multi-factor authentication protocols, next generation firewalls, comprehensive cloud email security and endpoint protection, detection, and response software, conducted continuous risk assessments, and established data security breach preparedness and response plans. We also promote security awareness with our employees and require all endpoint users to successfully complete our annual security awareness training.

In addition to information security, we must comply with increasingly complex and demanding regulatory standards enacted to protect the privacy of business and personal data in the United States, Europe and other jurisdictions. For example, the European Union adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”), which went into effect on May 25, 2018; and California enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act (the "CCPA") which went into effect on January 1, 2020, and additional jurisdictions are considering proposing or adopting similar regulations. These privacy laws impose additional requirements on companies regarding the handling of personal data and provide certain individual privacy rights to persons whose data is stored or processed.

We have implemented processes and systems to allow for the expedient response and resolution of data subject access requests in accordance with existing privacy laws and regulations that are applicable to our business, including GDPR and CCPA.

Community

Building better communities is part of our everyday values. Our community outreach initiatives support underserved communities including our unique signature community outreach programs Cold Feet, Warm Shoes, the Make a Difference Charity Golf Tournament benefitting United Way, Journeys'Attitude That Cares and Schuh’s Purpose Pillar program. In addition, the Company and our employees engage through community sponsorship and leadership, including actively supporting Nashville’s Pride Month and the Nashville Pride Parade, Can’d Aid and the United Way of Greater Nashville’s annual campaign, among other initiatives.

Governance

We have corporate governance mechanisms in place, along with internal controls over our financial reporting framework. We also have Enterprise Risk Management and Ethics and Compliance program frameworks, with annual updates provided to committees of our board of directors ("Board of Directors" or "Board") and our Board. To drive our ESG efforts, we have established an ESG/sustainability management and oversight framework under the direction of our Senior Vice President, Corporate Secretary and General Counsel. A subcommittee of the Nominating and Governance Committee of our Board oversees our ESG efforts.

Our commitment to diversity and inclusion is reflected in our Board, which is comprised of 67% of members who are diverse in either gender and/or ethnicity as of February 3, 2024. We are committed to efforts to expand our Board’s diversity.

Seasonality

Our business is seasonal with our investment in working capital normally reaching peaks in the spring and fall of each year and a significant portion of our net sales and operating income generated during the fourth quarter. The wholesale backlog is somewhat seasonal, reaching a peak in the Spring. We maintain in-stock programs for selected product lines with anticipated high-volume sales.

Environmental Matters

Our former manufacturing operations and the sites of those operations as well as the sites of our current operations are subject to numerous federal, state, and local laws and regulations relating to human health and safety and the environment. These laws and regulations address and regulate, among other matters, wastewater discharge, air quality and the generation, handling, storage, treatment, disposal, and transportation of solid and hazardous wastes and releases of hazardous substances into the environment. In addition, third parties and governmental agencies in some cases have the power under such laws and regulations to require remediation of environmental conditions and, in the case of governmental agencies, to impose fines and penalties. Several of the facilities owned by us (currently or in the past) are located in industrial areas and have historically been used for extensive periods for industrial operations such as tanning, dyeing, and manufacturing. Some of these operations used materials and generated wastes that would be considered regulated substances under current environmental laws and regulations. We are currently involved in certain administrative and judicial environmental proceedings relating to our former facilities. See Note 15 to the Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8, "Financial Statements and Supplementary Data".

Available Information

We file reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other reports from time to time. We are an electronic filer and the SEC maintains an internet site at http://www.sec.gov that contains the reports, proxy and information statements, and other information filed electronically. Our website address, which is provided as an inactive textual reference only, is http://www.genesco.com. We make available free of charge through the website Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and all amendments to those reports as soon as reasonably practicable after such material is electronically filed with or furnished to the SEC. Copies of the charters of each of our Audit Committee, Compensation Committee, Nominating and Governance Committee as well as our Corporate Governance Guidelines and Code of Ethics along with position descriptions for our Board of Directors and Board committees are also available free of charge through the website. The information provided on our website is not part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K and is therefore not incorporated by reference unless such information is otherwise specifically incorporated elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.