Business Description

OVERVIEW Designer Brands Inc., originally founded as DSW Inc., is one of the world's largest designers, producers, and retailers of footwear and accessories. We operate in two reportable segments: the Retail segment and the Brand Portfolio segment. The Retail segment operates the DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse ("DSW"), The Shoe Co., and Rubino banners through its direct-to-consumer stores and e-commerce sites. The Brand Portfolio segment primarily earns revenue from the wholesale of our exclusive and licensed brands to retailers, our Retail segment, and international distributors and the sale of our Vince Camuto, Keds, and Topo brands through direct-to-consumer e-commerce sites. Beginning with this 2025 Annual Report on Form 10-K, we aggregated our previously reported U.S. Retail operating segment and Canada Retail operating segment into a single reportable segment, the Retail segment, due to the similar nature of their operations and economic characteristics. All prior period segment information has been recast to conform to the current reporting segment presentation. On April 8, 2024, we completed the acquisition of Rubino Shoes Inc. ("Rubino"), a retailer of branded footwear, handbags, and accessories that operates Rubino banner stores and an e-commerce site in Quebec, Canada. The acquisition of Rubino has allowed our Retail segment to expand into the province of Quebec. Our fiscal year ends on the Saturday nearest to January 31. References to a fiscal year (e.g., "2025") refer to the calendar year in which the fiscal year begins. This reporting schedule is followed by many national retail companies and typically results in a 52-week fiscal year (including 2025 and 2024), but occasionally will contain an additional week resulting in a 53-week fiscal year (including 2023). RETAIL SEGMENT BANNERS The Retail segment offers a wide assortment of dress, casual, and athletic footwear and accessories for women, men, and kids in stores and online under the following banners: • DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse- Our DSW banner, which is offered both in the United States ("U.S.") and in Canada, is the destination for on-trend and fashion-forward footwear and accessory brands at a great value every single day. • The Shoe Co.- The Shoe Co. banner in Canada offers on-trend footwear and accessory brands that target every-day family styles at a great value every single day. • Rubino- Our Rubino banner in Quebec, Canada offers on-trend footwear and accessory brands that target every-day family styles at affordable prices. Our e-commerce platforms offer customers convenient, 24/7 access to our products through our websites, including mobile-optimized sites, and our mobile applications. Our omni-channel capabilities allow customers to order a wide range of styles, sizes, widths and categories. Online orders for the DSW and The Shoe Co. banners can be fulfilled from our stores or directly from our suppliers for certain products (referred to as "drop ship"). Online orders from the U.S. can also be fulfilled from our distribution center located in New Jersey ("East Coast Logistics Center") , which is a shared facility with the Brand Portfolio segment . Our order routing optimization system determines the best location to fulfill digitally-demanded products, which allows us to optimize our operating profit. To further meet customer demand of how they receive products, we provide our customers the option to buy online and pick up in stores for the majority of our store locations. Likewise, returns may be shipped to us or brought back to any of our store locations. 1 Table of contents ASSORTMENT We sell a large assortment of national, exclusive, and licensed brands. We believe that offering a robust assortment of our exclusive and licensed brands alongside top national brands provides our customers with a unique assortment and allows us to lean into our integrated business model for providing value. We disaggregate our net sales into non-athletic women's, men's and kids' footwear, athletic footwear, and accessories and other. Refer to Note 3 , Revenue , of the consolidated financial statements of this Form 10-K for the disaggregation of net sales.…