While Foot Locker, the dominant athletic footwear chain in America, has been very successful, Mr. Bryant said, newer ideas have flooded the retail market, leaving Woolworth flatfooted.

Sibley's Shoes was a retail footwear chain founded in 1920 in the city of Detroit, Michigan, USA.

Right now, Reebok is rushing to fill the empty shelves in the country's more than 2,500 Foot Lockers after Nike and Foot Locker, the world's largest athletic footwear chain, had a falling-out.

JUST FOR FEET An appalling, insensitive commercial for an athletic footwear chain named Just For Feet stunned Super Bowl viewers.

I Map This branch of a footwear chain is where ordinary (and still very stylish) Parisian women buy their shoes and boots.

The buyer, NexCen Brands, is only six months old, but it has already made its presence known on Wall Street, buying the footwear chain Athlete's Foot and the designer clothing label Bill Blass.

After a festive period that has seen footwear chain Barratts Priceless axe 1,600 jobs and retail chains La Senza and D2 Jeans enter administration, the British Retail Consortium admitted that an unseasonably mild Christmas had not dispelled the economic chill on Britain's high streets.

More than 100 stores will be converted into other, more productive Melville formats like Foot Action, a footwear chain.

Some footwear chains are exclusively geared to meeting the demands of fashion conscious teenagers, for example.

Fayva, the retail footwear chain owned by Morse Shoe Inc. in Canton, Mass., said yesterday that it would review its account, with billings estimated at $6 million to $10 million, after seven years at Jordan, McGrath, Case & Taylor in New York.