I got my Heelys on Friday. Have not tried to “heel” yet because I don’t want to hurt myself before Christmas. But I did some store visits for Heelys and found the buzz is still there. I also did some check on eBay, which I think is a better indicator than the local store numbers. Here are my findings on eBay:
Date #heelys #faked
12Dec06 1628 178
13Dec06 1300 128
14Dec06 1294 119
15Dec06 1270 81
16Dec06 1250 100
I visited Sport Authority, Journeys (those two counts the 11% and 11.6% of Heelys domestic sales for the first 9 months of 2006), Nordstrom, Dick’s Sporting Good, FinishLine, and Kids Footlocker.
1) Jouneys: every mall in St. Louis has this store. It seems selling well. I saw two instances people are looking or buying the Heelys. On a separate note, I was really impressed by Journeys’ efficiency in such a small space, their sales revenue per square footage should be very good. In a way I think kids like to “learn the fashion” from each other, in other words, the kids are helping Jounneys marketing the shoes, for free. Also, I found the associates in Jounneys are interesting young people, by “interesting” I mean they ususally have tatoos, strange hair style (young guys), and wear jeans with holes.
2) Sport Authority: while Journeys is a specialty store (it does not do discount very often); SA is a super market for sports goods (it gives discount for more stuff). I found the SA in Manchester Rd. is taking $10 off for all the kids’ Heelys. I am not particularly concerned on one instance. But if they continue to mark down the price (and in other stores), I will be concerned.
3) Other stores: Nordstrom is still the premier store (full price); FinishLine is a sports shoes store and it seems is not selling too many Heelys.
4) Knockoffs: I saw the knockoffs kiosk in the South County Mall yesterday. They are exactly same as the ones I saw on eBay. It starts from $49.99 after “30% off”. Again I questions the Parents/Grandparents’ mentality on buying knockoffs: I think they are just dumb, will you give your kids faked cars to drive?!