1970s–1990s: Diversification as Brown Group
After doing well in the 1960s, in 1969 Brown's earnings dropped 25% after a 1968 flood of imports into the US shoe industry. W. L. Hadley Griffin became the company's president in 1969 and began diversifying into areas beyond shoes. In 1970 Brown acquired the importer Italia Bootwear, Ltd. After acquiring Eagle Rubber Company, Kent Sporting Goods, and other companies, in 1972 Brown changed its name to the Brown Group, Inc. It continued to acquire companies in children's products and sports and recreation.[9] In the 1970s, Brown operated Famous Footwear, Cloth World fabric stores, Bottom Half jeans stores, and Meis department stores.[11] In February 1979, it was reported that Brown Group, then the largest American producer of namebrand footwear, was petitioning for price relief from the federal government.[12]
After closing its St. Louis warehouse in 1980, Brown began adjusting its business strategy to deal with pressure from cheap imports throughout the 1980s. In 1985 the company divested itself of its recreational products operations, leaving its focus largely on shoe retailing and manufacturing, with a quarter of operations in other stores. Around that time, Brown began to move away from manufacturing and toward shoe importing, acquiring Arnold Dunn, Inc., an importer, in 1984, and in 1986, the company acquired Pagoda Trading Company, an importing firm based in Asia. In 1988, Brown began to concentrate marketing on its well-known brands such as Connie, Naturalizer, and Buster Brown, while discontinuing its marginal lines. In 1989 the company sold all of its non-footwear retail operations except for the Cloth World chain.[9]
In the early 1990s, Brown closed six of its domestic shoe plants, and in 1993 it began to close its Wohl Leased Shoe Department operation. In 1995, the last Brown Group-owned shoe factory in the United States closed, leaving the company with only two manufacturing plants in Canada. It sold three of its five headquarters buildings and its Cloth World chain. 35 percent of the overall workforce at Brown was fired, eliminating 8,500 jobs. Brown then acquired the Larry Stuart Collection and the Le Coq Sportif brand in 1995. The following year, Brown signed license agreements to market athletic footwear under the Russell and Penn brand names.[9] After operating from 1972 until 1999 as the Brown Group, it became Brown Shoe again in 1999.[9][13]
