Shoes to Go

Florsheim Group (Chicago), the shoe retailer that declared bankruptcy earlier this month, has announced that it will close 10 stores in its home city immediately.

At the time of its bankruptcy petition, the retailer said it would liquidate inventory in 131 of its 210 stores and sell most of its assets to Weyco Group Inc. (Milwaukee), a shoe company whose brands include Stacy Adams, Brass Boot and Nunn Bush.

Three of the 10 stores are in the city proper. The other seven are in the Chicago-area suburbs of Bloomingdale, Fairview Heights, Gurnee, Lombard, North Riverside, Schaumburg and Vernon Hills.

Weyco, which purchase Florsheim's U.S. wholesale business, related assets and some of its 155 domestic stores for about $44.8 million (plus the assumption of certain debts), said it plans to keep just 23 stores open under the Florsheim brand. Weyco Group's chairman is Thomas Florsheim, the grandson of Milton Florsheim, who founded the Florsheim Shoe Co. in Chicago in 1892. Thomas Florsheim Jr. is Weyco's president and ceo and John Florsheim is coo.