Three decades after opening a single self-service shoe store on Bel Air Boulevard, Mobile businessman Terry Barkin has grown Shoe Station into an 18-store chain spanning five Gulf South states, and he says the company’s roots in the Port City remain central to its identity.
Barkin spent 22 years at the Atlanta-based Rich’s department store chain before deciding to strike out on his own in the mid-1980s. After Rich’s was acquired by Federated Department Stores in 1979, he rose to senior vice president overseeing a third of the company’s total sales volume, but eventually concluded there was no further room to advance. Rather than take a job with another retailer, he chose to build something of his own, drawing on 15 years of experience merchandising footwear.
His concept was simple but distinctive for the era: an open-shelf store where customers could browse name-brand shoes displayed directly on the sales floor, with minimal staff overhead keeping prices competitive. After scouting locations across the Southeast, Barkin settled on a vacant building near Bel Air Mall that had previously housed a tire and battery center. The first Shoe Station opened there on October 1, 1984.
The Mobile store’s early success allowed Barkin to expand quickly, opening in Pensacola in 1986 and Biloxi the following year. Today Shoe Station operates in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana, employing roughly 450 workers between full- and part-time staff. Two of Barkin’s sons are now part of the leadership team: Brent Barkin serves as vice president, and Jordan Barkin has been helping open a new store location on U.S. 59 in Foley, expected to open in early 2015.
Mobile remains home to three Shoe Station locations, including the original site and a Hillcrest Road store that Barkin said has become the chain’s top seller. A store on the Eastern Shore is slated to double in size by spring 2015 to match the footprint of the company’s west Mobile location. Barkin credited the Port City with the company’s overall trajectory, saying the strength of the original store gave him the confidence to expand into neighboring markets.
The company relocated its headquarters about seven years ago from the original Bel Air Boulevard building to an office park off Cottage Hill Road, a move Barkin said was necessary to accommodate a growing buying and merchandising staff. Shoe Station now carries more than 100 brands, including Crocs, Dansko, Birkenstock and Chaco, and Barkin said the company remains one of the largest independent Crocs retailers in the country.
Looking ahead, Barkin said Shoe Station plans to add about 40,000 square feet of retail space over the next 15 months, including a location in Madison, Mississippi, set to open in 2016. He said the company typically targets mid-sized metro areas where one or two stores can serve the entire local market, and that despite decades of growth, he still believes in investing in physical storefronts even as online shopping expands.
Barkin, who has spent more than 50 years in the retail industry, said staying nimble has been essential to the company’s survival. “We make decisions very quickly, right or wrong,” he said, adding that increased competition from big-box and specialty retailers has made growth harder to come by than it was when he first opened the Bel Air Boulevard store three decades ago.