The Walking Company

The Walking Company, Inc., is a United States-based comfort footwear company and subsidiary of The Walking Company Holdings, Inc., that was founded in 1991 in Chatsworth, California.

Co-founders Steve Adler and Jim Argyropoulos created the plan for The Walking Company (formerly The Walking Store) after Argyropoulos’ return from a vacation in Europe, where he was inspired by European footwear designs. In July 1991, they opened and self-financed the first store in Pasadena, California. Shortly after the store’s opening, it faced some setbacks and endured through several earthquakes and a fire. Nonetheless, Adler and Argyropoulos opened four more stores within a year of opening their first location.

Adler attributed the company’s initial success to its narrow focus on a specific walking shoe category sold at a reasonable price targeting 56 million Americans in the walking market. "You're not going to be able to buy a great $50 technical walking shoe," Adler told Orange Coast in 1992. "We're trying to bring the price points down to $100."

In 2004, The Walking Company was acquired by Big Dogs Holdings, Inc., based in Santa Barbara, California, and Andrew Feshbach became the CEO of the company. At the time of acquisition, The Walking Company operated 72 stores in 28 states. The company reorganized its brand in 2010, and The Walking Company became a subsidiary of The Walking Company Holdings, Inc., along with Big Dogs, an activewear and accessories brand. By 2015, The Walking Company had expanded to 212 mostly mall-based retail stores and a distribution center in Lincolnton, North Carolina.

The Walking Company is home to Raffini Umberto, Tara M., and other brands, but more notable is its ABEO biomechanical footwear, a selection of comfort footwear made with built-in or removable orthotics. The company developed ABEO in 2009 with sandals that included built-in orthotics. By 2010, the ABEO brand expanded to casual styles and athletics and had generated $3 million in revenue with plans to reach $80 million in revenue in the following 4 years. In November 2015, the company also opened a flagship ABEO store in Tysons Corner Center, an upscale shopping mall in Tysons Corner, Virginia.

In October 2015, The Walking Company announced that it would be signing celebrity chef Anne Burrell--known for her personality on The Food Network’s The Worst Cooks in America--as a brand ambassador for its ABEO brand. The following year in July 2016, the company also signed a second ABEO brand ambassador, heptathlon Olympian Barbara Nwaba, preceding her participation in the 2016 Olympic Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro.

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