SKECHERS Establishes "SKECHERS Fitness Group" Sales Organization to Maximize Growing Offering of Technical Athletic Footwear

May 25, 2011 • 9:05 am EDT

MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- SKECHERS USA, Inc. (NYSE:SKX), a global footwear leader, today announced that it has developed the SKECHERS Fitness Group sales force to support the Company's increasing focus on technical athletic footwear. With this change, the Company created two distinct sales organizations -- one to focus on its performance footwear and the other on its lifestyle footwear. In so doing, SKECHERS is capitalizing on its growing technical lines while utilizing the talents of its veteran team in order to better meet the needs of its accounts.

"Since we began in 1992, lifestyle footwear has been at the core of our business and allowed us to grow from a small company to a globally recognized two billion-dollar brand," began Michael Greenberg, president of SKECHERS. "Over the last year, we have grown our offering of technical athletic footwear to encompass numerous cutting-edge running, training and walking shoes under our Resistance, Shape-ups and Tone-ups lines, transitioning from a pure lifestyle brand to a lifestyle and high-performance company. The changes in our sales organization reflect this natural evolution of our brand. With new technical product launching throughout this year and next, we felt it imperative to build an expert athletic sales force to more effectively sell and market our growing SKECHERS Fitness Group offering."

As part of the restructuring, SKECHERS has appointed Gary Stern, former Vice President of Sales, Men's Sport, to the position of Vice President of Sales, SKECHERS Fitness Group. The Company has assigned several highly experienced athletic industry veterans for the SKECHERS Fitness Group, which encompasses SKECHERS Resistance, Shape-ups and Tone-ups lines.

SKECHERS USA, Inc., based in Manhattan Beach, California, designs, develops and markets a diverse range of footwear for men, women and children under the SKECHERS name, as well as under several uniquely branded names. SKECHERS footwear is available in the United States via department and specialty stores, Company-owned SKECHERS retail stores and its e-commerce website, and in over 100 countries and territories through the Company's global network of distributors and subsidiaries in Canada, Brazil, Chile, and across Europe, as well as through joint ventures in Asia. For more information, please visit www.skechers.com.

This announcement may contain forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, any statement that may predict, forecast, indicate or simply state future results, performance or achievements, and can be identified by the use of forward looking language such as "believe," "anticipate," "expect," "estimate," "intend," "plan," "project," "will be," "will continue," "will result," "could," "may," "might," or any variations of such words with similar meanings. Any such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause or contribute to such differences include international, national and local general economic, political and market conditions including the global economic slowdown and market instability; entry into the highly competitive performance footwear market; sustaining, managing and forecasting costs and proper inventory levels; losing any significant customers, decreased demand by industry retailers and cancellation of order commitments due to the lack of popularity of particular designs and/or categories of products; maintaining brand image and intense competition among sellers of footwear for consumers; anticipating, identifying, interpreting or forecasting changes in fashion trends, consumer demand for the products and the various market factors described above; sales levels during the spring, back-to-school and holiday selling seasons; and other factors referenced or incorporated by reference in the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2010 and the Company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended March 31, 2011. The risks included here are not exhaustive. The Company operates in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks emerge from time to time and the companies cannot predict all such risk factors, nor can the companies assess the impact of all such risk factors on their respective businesses or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. Given these risks and uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results. Moreover, reported results should not be considered an indication of future performance.


    Source: SKECHERS USA, Inc.