Brown Shoe Co. Inc.’s profit jumped 57 percent in the third quarter thanks to a strong back-to-school selling season.

The St. Louis-based shoe retailer reported a profit of $16.3 million for the quarter ended Oct. 31, up from a profit of $10.4 million a year earlier.

Net sales totaled $625.6 million in the third quarter, down 1 percent from $631.7 million a year ago.

Same-store sales for Famous Footwear increased 4.7 percent during the quarter, and specialty retail same-store sales increased 4.1 percent, Brown Shoe said.

“Our strategies to offer trend-right product, an enhanced store experience, and the increased reach of our marketing communications helped deliver a strong back-to-school selling season at Famous Footwear,” Chairman and Chief Executive Ron Fromm said in a statement. “In addition, improved consumer reaction to our Naturalizer product and our other wholesale brands drove better sell-thrus at retail and, in particular, strong same-store sales results at our Naturalizer stores.”

In an effort to reduce its energy demand and contribution to global warming The Timberland Company (NYSE: TBL – News) announced today that state of the art LED lighting will be replacing less efficient incandescent spotlights in 70% of its North American stores by the end of 2009. By reducing the electricity used on a daily basis for lighting in its stores, Timberland expects to shrink the carbon footprint of its US stores by an additional 11%.

“Our retail store design puts our environmental commitment into action,” said John Trott, Timberland’s Vice President North America Consumer Direct. “Where you walk, what you touch, how the lighting showcases our product with the least impact on our environment, all reflect our heritage of environmental stewardship.”

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I was surprised by an article I’ve just seen in The Telegraph covering a Which? survey on deliveries by online retailers, which found that nearly 7% of customers were unhappy with deliveries.

According to Which?, almost 200 out of 2,500 customers surveyed reported some kind of delivery issues, and  some of them are shocking. In one case, a laptop was thrown over a six foot wall, items were left in dustbins, while others were simply left carelessly in public view.

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Heelys, Inc. (NASDAQ: HLYS – News) announced today that on November 17, 2009, the federal judge presiding over the previously disclosed consolidated securities class action and consolidated shareholder derivative action approved the settlements of those lawsuits and signed a Final Judgment and Order of Dismissal with Prejudice with respect to each lawsuit. These cases were pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division. These settlement agreements were described in the Company’s prior filings. Defendants did not admit any liability or wrongdoing in the settlements.

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This week I’m writing for the SME audience on Econsultancy, a sweet homage to the much debated yet scarcely implemented topic of website testing, something which should be an integral part of your strategy, the testing plan being the culmination of analysis of web data and voice-of-customer. 

If you are not yet testing and are spending money on marketing/advertising, then read this post and do something about it. Testing is not the preserve of major brands with big budgets, it’s the mental gap you need to cross not the financial one.

Smack in the face with numbers

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I’m not a big fan of the press release as a method of reaching out to journalists for the first time, but they remain the staple diet of most PR campaigns.

I receive a lot of press releases, some more relevant than others, but I’d be lying if I said I read them all. I don’t. Many emailed press releases aren’t even opened, largely because the subject line doesn’t inspire me to look at them.

So what can you do to make your press release more effective? What will make writers more inclined to open and read them?

RECALL

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Brown Shoe Co. said it expects its third-quarter profit to top analysts’ estimates on an improvement in a key sales figure.

Late Tuesday the footwear company said it anticipates quarterly earnings of 40 cents to 41 cents per share, which removes 4 cents per share related to information technology initiatives.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters, whose estimates normally exclude one-time items, forecast third-quarter profit of 30 cents per share.

Brown Shoe said sales for the period ended Oct. 31 dipped 1 percent to $625.6 million.

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Over the past year, we’ve seen a couple of examples of well known e-commerce sites being unable to cope with traffic spikes, mainly caused by sales.

This time last year, Debenham’s website went down for around 24 hours thanks to the weight of sales traffic, while the Next website had to implement a queuing system in July thanks to a traffic spike.

But what can online retailers do to avoid such problems?

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Many women are willing to pay top penny for the perfect pair of heels. So when it was announced that famed stiletto-meister Jimmy Choo was planning to collaborate with H&M, you could practically hear a collective cheer coming from the female population.

For the official launch on Saturday morning, we popped over to the retailer’s blockbsuster Fifth Avenue location to find out about the devoted shoppers waiting on line to score the “Jimmy Choo for H&M” loot. (Some of them had been there for 12 hours in the rain!)

Whether super styled or comfortably suited for an extensive day of credit card swiping, photographer Alys Kenny snapped them all. Check out the array of chic scenesters before running off and buying your new pair of Choo Choos!

I don’t have a story about how I had to walk four miles to school in the snow as a child, because I didn’t. But I did have to wait for the bus, and sometimes it was really, really cold. I remember actually wishing my boots had heaters in them.

Guess what?

You can now buy boots with heaters in them.

The “Columbia “Bugathermo” has a built-in heating system that will keep your feet warm for up to eight hours, depending on which of the three settings you choose. The heated boots are rated to -25 degrees F (-32 C), and feature rechargeable battery packs. If it’s heated boots for women that you’re after, then you may want to check out the Columbia “Snow Hottie.”