Environmental Social Governance
Across our portfolio of brands, we feel passionately that how we do business is as important as how much business we do.
Our long-standing pledge to quality craftmanship includes creating sustainable and lasting value for all our stakeholders. What it really comes down to is caring - about people, ethics and integrity, our shared planet, and about healthy financial performance. Caring is so integral to our business that we champion it as one of our core company values.
The Caleres story is most simply defined by the company’s mission: Inspire people to feel great...feet first.
Explore our five-star ESG promise and our portfolio of ambitious ESG targets that we are working to achieve by 2025 in our 2023 ESG Report - Caleres Cares...Feet First.
Our long-standing pledge to quality craftmanship includes creating sustainable and lasting value for all our stakeholders. What it really comes down to is caring - about people, ethics and integrity, our shared planet, and about healthy financial performance. Caring is so integral to our business that we champion it as one of our core company values.
The Caleres story is most simply defined by the company’s mission: Inspire people to feel great...feet first.
Explore our five-star ESG promise and our portfolio of ambitious ESG targets that we are working to achieve by 2025 in our 2023 ESG Report - Caleres Cares...Feet First.
Letter from our President and CEO
Since becoming CEO in January 2023, I’ve gained an even broader perspective on the agility and commitment that Caleres Associates share for fostering a sustainable business that generates value for our consumers, partners, shareholders, communities, each other, and our planet. Caleres continues to move closer to meeting our 2025 ESG goals, which serve as a compass for our strategic choices and day-to-day decision making. I am constantly inspired by the Caleres culture of caring, our focus on inclusivity, our commitment to our consumers and to more sustainable solutions. You’ll find in this year’s report many examples of how Caleres Associates and our brands are stepping up to further our progress and commitment. I invite you to read further about our progress toward creating a more equitable, resilient, and responsible future.
Jay Schmidt, President and Chief Executive Officer
At Caleres, we care passionately about helping people feel great...feet first. That comfort arises from both our product portfolio and our five-star promise for delivering ESG excellence: Caleres Cares...Feet First.
Fit means more than how great our shoes feel on your feet. Every bit as important is how well our brands align with your values.
- Sam Edelman launched its ReLove initiative, a resell program for preloved Sam Edelman footwear. The program enables customers to list and sell their gently used Sam Edelman shoes through a designated page on the brand’s website, providing customers with a more sustainable way to update their wardrobe while extending the lifespan of Sam Edelman products. In less than a year, nearly 2,000 pairs of preloved Sam Edelman shoes were purchased by more than 1,200 unique buyers.
- United by a shared goal to end breast cancer, the Vionic x Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) collaboration offered limited-edition pink styles to symbolize that a cure for breast cancer is always on our minds. In 2023, Vionic donated more than $120,000 from the collaboration to BCRF in support of its mission to prevent and cure breast cancer by advancing the world’s most promising research.
- Allen Edmonds produces shoes with superior craftsmanship that allows its footwear to exceed the life span of many competitors. That life span is furthered through the company’s proprietary recrafting initiative, which restores shoes in our own factory to near new condition using original manufacturing materials and techniques. In 2023, the recrafting initiative helped keep more than 25,000 shoes from landfills.
step up for the earth
The One Planet Standard is a designation we give only to shoes that meet or exceed 51% on our Sustainable Footwear Index. We developed this standard to be comprehensive and consider the sustainability of a product across its entire lifecycle including these six key pillars: sample reduction, materials, packaging, supplier ESG initiatives, brand philanthropy, and end-of-life solutions.
VIEW OUR SUSTAINABLE FOOTWEAR INDEX
Caleres creates sustainable value by governing and operating with integrity and transparency and by pursuing ambitions ESG targets.
- For the third consecutive year, Caleres was named to Newsweek’s list of America’s Most Responsible Companies. For the first time, Caleres was named to the USA Today list of America’s Climate Leaders. And for the fifth time, Caleres was recognized by the Women’s Forum of New York for achieving gender parity on our Board of Directors.
- In 2023, Caleres launched the One Planet Standard, an earned designation for our products that meet our highest level of sustainability criteria by scoring 51% or more on our internal Sustainable Footwear Index. The One Planet Standard criteria cover the entire product life cycle, including sample reduction, materials, packaging, supplier initiative, brand philanthropy, and end-of-life solutions. Nearly 20% of our products currently meet the stringent criteria necessary to earn the One Planet Standard designation and they are identified on our website to allow consumers to easily identify products that achieve this high bar.
- 93% of Caleres-owned products contain at least one environmentally preferred material (up for 75% in 2022), well on track to meet our goal of 100% by 2025. All shoeboxes for our owned brands use environmentally preferred materials. We operate four zero waste distribution centers in North America and partner with 21 zero waste factories in China and Vietnam.
Curious, creative people working in an inclusive and empowering environment continue to propel our company forward.
- Four new Community Resource Groups (CRGs) were launched in 2023, supporting people with disabilities, veterans, women, and the environment. This brings to eight the total number of Caleres CRGs, joining previous groups launched to support BIPOC Associates, the LGBTQIA+ community, parents and caregivers, and new Associates. These groups deepen connections and foster recruitment, retention, and development for our Associates.
- Caleres aligned its values by bringing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) and Talent Acquisition operations under the leadership of our Vice President of DE&I, aimed at building and maintaining an environment that empowers Caleres Associates to innovate and connect with each other, which is critical to our success. A focus of our talent acquisition efforts over the past several years has been recruiting under-represented populations of people to ensure our workforce better reflects the diversity of our consumers and our communities.
- The Human Rights Campaign Foundation recognized Caleres with its “Equality 100 Award: Leader in LGBTQ+ Workplace Inclusion” for 2023-24. We met all the criteria on the Corporate Equality Index, a national benchmarking tool on corporate policies, practices, and benefits pertinent to LGBTQ+ employees.
We give back to people and communities in need and work to advance the profession and professionals of footwear.
- The Caleres Cares Charitable Trust matched over $300,000 in donations made by Associates to the qualified non-profit organizations they care about and recognized by the company’s top five volunteers by providing them with additional funds to donate to the organizations they support. The Trust also presented grants to a variety of organizations in St. Louis and New York, including Washington University as well as many arts and cultural institutions that help maintain a rich environment where our Associates live and work.
- More than 1,200 Caleres Associates across the United States participated in the company’s annual United Way campaign, with a total donation of over $800,000, including Associate pledges, special event fundraising, and a donation from the Caleres Cares Trust – a 20% increase over 2022.
- Caleres provided $250,000 in cash and over $250,000 in in-kind shoe donations to the Soles4Souls 4EveryKid program, which provides footwear for homeless youth across the country. In addition, customers donated more than $1 million through round-up at the register campaigns at Famous Footwear stores and Famous and other brand websites. Famous Footwear customers also donated nearly 16,000 pairs of gently used shoes in our stores to benefit the Soles4Souls 4Opportunity program, which helps individuals in low-income countries start their own businesses selling donated shoes and clothing.
By holding our suppliers to high standards and taking part in industry and NGO initiatives, we help drive continuous improvement.
- Caleres partners with 118 Tier 1 factories, 27 of which scored well enough on comprehensive quantitative and qualitative screens to be designated as strategic partners. Qualitative factors include commitment to ESG goals, innovation capabilities, shared Caleres values, and level of collaboration. These 27 strategic factories represent 77% of our direct volume.
- All Tier 1 factories agree to comply with Caleres’ Production Code of Conduct as part of their contractual agreements. The Code of Conduct focuses on four key principles – human rights, working conditions and labor rights, business ethics, and the environment.
- Our core factories are assessed twice each year on five key areas: supply chain risk, speed and agility, quality, sustainability, and operations. In 2023, we experienced a 14% improvement in audit scores, underscoring the effectiveness of our supply chain strategy.
2025 ESG Targets and Our Progress
Based on the results of materiality assessment and growing stakeholder expectations of our business, we developed a portfolio of ESG targets that we seek to achieve by 2025. The chart below shows those targets and our progress against them.