When it comes to shoes, people come in and buy them whenever the mood strikes. There are women who come to shop for shoes to de-stress and find their balance. It doesn’t matter what kind of shoes they get—it can be heels, sneakers, athletic shoes, and so on. It is times like these when shoppers need a friendly face and a knowledgeable person to ask questions to. It is when they are lost, depressed, or shopping in a rush that they need support and patience the most. If you feel that you can assist a shoe shopper in his or her most trying moments, then you have what it takes to be a Foot Locker employee.
Foot Locker is a leading athletic wear and apparel retail chain. It has close to four thousand stores worldwide. The chain was formerly known as F. W. Woolworth and then later as Venator. The Foot Locker chain was a subsidiary of Woolworth/Venator before the change in name. The name change was effected in 2001 after Foot Locker had become the single biggest chain owned by the company. At the time, Foot Locker business was equivalent to 70 percent of the chain’s revenue.
Most new graduates would be looking for a position that is interesting and would make them look good in. However, if one truly wants a place where training and growth is considered equally as important as the day’s sales, consider a career at this company. Foot Locker allows the Foot Locker application form to be submitted to their website and updated as necessary. This keeps the application always updated and ready to be pulled out and evaluated at a moment’s notice.
The parent company has been in business for more than a hundred years and has been publicly traded for most of its existence. Those wishing to submit a Foot Locker application are advised that this is an established company with long experience in managing diverse brands and specialty retail shops as subsidiaries.
Online applicants can submit their Foot Locker job application at the Foot Locker Careers page: http://www.sneakerjobs.com. Prospective applicants can signify their wish to apply for either home office jobs or store jobs. With a large number of branches spread throughout the United States, a job candidate would be better off submitting his Foot Locker online application. A prospective applicant can fill out the Foot Locker job application form at his own time and convenience. In addition, the Foot Locker application online form can be updated at the most opportune time.
It has been forty years since the first Foot Locker store was opened. A lot of changes and challenges have come and gone since then, but Foot Locker is still the same company with bright dreams for its staff. Foot Locker started out as a subsidiary of Kinney Shoe Corporation, a specialty retail shop whose primary item for sale was shoes. While Foot Locker was reaping success, the other subsidiaries fell into a decline. Kinney closed its stores by 1998, and Woolworth closed its last department stores in 1997. By then, Foot Locker was significantly larger than the flagship stores and was experiencing a robust growth and profit margin year after year. The name change in 2001 was a passing of the torch.
The Foot Locker main offices are located in Manhattan, New York City, New York. It is a dynamic and globally expanding business with thousands of employees in the corporate level and even more in the individual store categories. As individual stores are usually located inside malls, there is usually a need for more personnel every time a new shopping mall or complex opens. The nature of the shoe retail business dictates managing the stores autonomously and with an eye for local flavor. Store personnel should understand their target market, the community, and have a passion for sports shoes. They should be able to intelligently answer customers’ queries and give customers sound advice when buying cross trainers, running shoes, or aerobic sneakers.
Like other specialty retail stores, Foot Locker relies on good customer service in order to make a sale and keep its customers coming back month in and month out. Prospective Foot Locker employees must know how to cultivate customers; they must have good interpersonal skills necessary in maintaining customer relations, as well as good people skills.
In the business of shoes, Foot Locker store personnel must have patience as the customers browse the merchandise display in search of the shoes they like. Typically, customers would try several shoes in different styles before they decide on a single pair of shoes. Foot Locker employees must have an understanding of the sales skills needed to hurry up the sales process. Unfortunately, for the most part, what store personnel need is a healthy dose of patience. While a client may take his time in trying out and choosing among different styles of shoes, the store personnel have to assist other customers as well. Prospective Foot Locker personnel must be able to multitask between a few customers. They would be in search of specific styles or brands and shoe sizes. It is not uncommon for one brand to have slightly larger shoe sizes than another. Getting shoes over and over again for the client to try may be frustrating for a salesperson. There are also customers who take awhile to decide which shoes they want and often have to try on half a dozen pairs. If you’re lucky, he or she will buy the eighth pair; but even if the customer walks out of the store empty-handed, the Foot Locker employee must still be courteous and respectful. The sale could be made on another day, but for this encounter, it was all about establishing good rapport with the buyer.
The prospective Foot Locker store personnel should also know how to display merchandise properly in order to attract the most customers. Merchandising as well as stocking are important tasks of Foot Locker store personnel. It is their job to ensure that their sales area is clean and uncluttered by shoes. A methodical mind helps in getting the job on the Foot Locker sales floor.
The Foot Locker online application can wait online even if the candidate has already been accepted in the company. Candidates can keep on filing or updating their Foot Locker online applications in the hopes that they would be able to find a job that suits them to a tee. The Foot Locker employment application also affords the prospective applicant time to look for other jobs. This proves to be an advantage for younger applicants who still “shop around” for companies and send their job applications to different websites and stores.
Foot Locker also offers different employment schedules. There are several positions that are part-time work, but each one offers great compensation. For instance, a Foot Locker sales associate receives $10,000 to $30,000 per year, depending on the number of hours worked, experience, and store location. A full-time regular Foot Locker associate earns from $25,000 to 42,000 per year. A Foot Locker store manager can earn from $27,000 to $58,000 per year. While a district manager can earn from $65,000 to $89,000 per year. The above salaries are only representative of what an applicant can earn. Actual salaries depend on a person’s experience and the store location.
Although stores are run autonomously, the Foot Locker supervisor still defers to the district manager for escalation issues. District managers manage store operations for branches within their area. District managers may not have the same responsibilities as the store manager; however, it is still the district manager’s responsibility to manage the store managers and their stores. The district manager ensures the flow of goods and logistical support to the stores within his area. He also manages the different store managers, ensuring that they are adequately supported and trained and knowledgeable about their jobs. The district manager is also tasked to come up with plans to increase the store sales of Foot Locker branches within his area.
It takes an excellently organized structure to run the day-to-day operations of the company. The store environment is a smaller version of this system, which means it is extremely important that the right people are in place. The Foot Locker store manager is assisted by store associates and the assistant store manager. Operating as a team, the store manager ensures that the store runs smoothly. He is responsible for the team’s performance and individual well-being. The store manager is also responsible for the store’s day-to-day operations.
Included as part of the store manager’s tasks is manpower scheduling and inventory reorder and restocking. Recruitment and some HR concerns, which can be handled at the store, are also within the store manager’s responsibility. If there is a need to help man the cash registers, the store manager is expected to pitch in as needed. His natural good-natured personality is always required as he usually has more contact with store customers than other members of the team. Interested applicants for manager position can submit their Foot Locker application online.
Those wishing to submit their Foot Locker application online have to be lively and should not get easily bored. Although a store’s daily activities are very much dependent on the store or mall pedestrian traffic volume, there would be times when the associate would be doing nothing, and it would seem that keeping up with a customer is a hard task. However, customer service is at the heart of the operations at Foot Locker. Service with a smile and sincere attitude will go far in terms of maintaining a healthy customer base. There are customers who will just walk in and browse the racks without purchasing anything and then come back the next week to buy several pairs. At any rate, the store personnel should treat each guest who comes in as though he/she were royalty.
Prospective Foot Locker employees should be self-motivated and have a lively work attitude. Knowledge about shoes is also very important, seeing that the applicant would be surrounded by shoes every day. Besides being motivated, the applicant should also show that he is serious about getting a job. When submitting a Foot Locker application, the applicant has to be sure that he wants to work for Foot Locker and is prepared to embody all that the company and the store stands for.
Filling out the application for Foot Locker is not the start of the application process or the job hiring process. The applicant, before signifying his intention to apply, should be interested in shoes and other merchandise at an early age. Only then should he sign his application for Foot Locker.
Foot Locker is one brand that has grown larger than the mother companies. The prospective Foot Locker store manager should be able to assist customers and do the tasks an entry-level associate has been doing. That does not mean that the store manager should undergo the same training as entry-level personnel. It only means that the store manager should be able to pitch in at any step of the customer’s purchasing process.
Foot Locker employees enjoy benefits that are at par with or slightly better than the rest of the industry. Work-related benefits include:
Foot Locker is a popular and well-loved store retail chain with branches in various locations all over the United States. It can be found in most shopping complexes and commercial strips. It offers the latest and most updated athletic shoes for men, women, and children. Foot Locker was formerly owned by Woolworth, a department store chain. Failing sales made it decide to close their other stores. In 2001, the retail chain changed its name to Foot Locker, in deference to the shoe retail chain comprising 70 percent of the Woolworth group’s revenue.
Foot Locker is represented in more than twenty-one countries across the world. It is listed at the New York Stock exchange.
Foot Locker Careers page: http://jobs.Foot Locker-inc.com/
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