Zionsville-based hat retailer Lids Sports Group is seeking a new leader after the resignation of Kenneth Kocher, who ran the company for more than a decade.
Scott Molander, who launched the chain as Hat World with a single store in Tippecanoe Mall in Lafayette in 1995, is joining the Tennessee-based company that's buying Lids' sports-uniform business.
A universal digital inventory system that links customers to goods in more than a thousand Lids Sports Group stores helped the firm wrestle the Indianapolis Colts business away from locally based MainGate Inc., a national player in its own right.
Sales for Indianapolis-based Lids Sports Group have been so disappointing that parent Genesco Inc. within the past six months has twice cut its fiscal 2015 full-year earnings, from a high of $5.55 per share to a low of $4.75 per share.
Zionsville officials on Monday agreed to sell 15.6 acres in the new Creekside Corporate Park to Hat World Inc. for $577,200. Local incentives tied to the deal could allow the company to recoup at least half of the purchase price.
The deal to move the retailer's corporate center from Marion to Boone counties dates back to May, when town officials closed on a $3 million land deal that they hoped would attract new development.
The Indy-based retailer that operates nationally as Lids plans to build a 150,000-square-foot headquarters in Zionsville, beef up local distribution operations, and go on a major hiring spree.
The Governor's office said it plans to make "a major economic development announcement" Friday morning "regarding hundreds of new jobs for Hoosiers" at the headquarters of Hat World Inc. in Indianapolis.
Genesco’s hat unit now has reported four consecutive quarters of declining same-store sales—an unusual malaise for a business that from 2001 to 2006 posted a miraculous 19 straight quarters of increased same-store sales.
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