Blog

Oct 28, 2023

DSW Opens Shoe Stores Inside Hy

The partnership is an effort to help customers get more shopping done in fewer

The partnership is an effort to help customers get more shopping done in fewer trips.

Jelisa Castrodale has been a staff writer with Food & Wine since 2019.

So you're making your grocery list, and you've remembered to include coffee, hamburger buns, and maybe a pair of Chelsea boots. That's not a typo, at least not if you're in the Twin Cities.

Earlier this week, DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse opened its first two locations inside Hy-Vee grocery stores, and four more of these store-in-store concepts are expected to open in the next few weeks. Hy-Vee has also said that these mini-DSWs could appear in additional supermarkets in its eight-state region in 2021—so get ready, Midwesterners.

Supermarket shoppers can park their carts and check out "a variety of athletic, fashion [and] casual" shoes on display in the store, and see the top 100 current shoe trends displayed on a "digital showroom" wall. (Before you ask, yes, you can try shoes on, and the pairs that aren't purchased are thoroughly disinfected. According to the Star-Tribune, any shoes that are returned to the store will be put aside for three days before being returned to the sales floor.)

"People go to grocery stores a lot more often than shoe stores, so we wanted to put our product in front of shoppers more often," Bill Jordan, the chief growth officer for DSW parent company, Designer Brands, said. "Customers today are looking for convenience. They want to get as much shopping done in as few places as possible."

If you find a new pair of kicks, you can either buy them in-store or order them through dsw.com using a QR code, and have them shipped to your home address or to the DSW pickup lockers in the store. Customers will get a text message alerting them that their shoe order is ready for pickup.

This isn't the first retail partnership for the West Des Moines, Iowa grocery chain. In 2016, some locations started offering men, women, and kids clothing from British fast-fashion label F&F (which is a part of U.K. grocery chain Tesco). Those items were later swapped out for clothes from Canadian fashion retailer Joe Fresh, a brand that is also sold at Canadian grocer Loblaws.

"We continue to innovate and help today's consumer by offering them an easier and more convenient way to shop quality footwear for their families," Randy Edeker, the president and CEO of Hy-Vee said. "By combining in-store and online shopping experiences together with DSW, we are able to meet the unique needs of every shopper and make the shopping experience, whether in-store, online or both, seamless."

And now that you've gotten a new pair of boots, don't forget those hamburger buns—they're on the list!