Boot Barn CEO: Morgan Wallen’s Impact on Business Is ‘Massive’ When His Tour Comes to Town

The tour partnership, which kicked off in November, has brought some “really great excitement” to the business, the CEO said.

Boot Barn’s link with musicians seem to be a winning formula for the Western retailer.

On the company’s first quarter conference call on Wednesday, Boot Barn president and chief executive officer Jim Conroy fielded a question from an analyst regarding the effectiveness of the retailer’s tour partnership with country music star Morgan Wallen.

The tour partnership, which kicked off in November, has brought some “really great excitement” to the business, the CEO said.

“[Wallen’s] impact on the business is massive when he goes in and out of a market,” Conroy noted on the call. “We’ve seen a really nice uptick in customer capture, and a good part of those customers are now leaning a little bit more female, a little bit younger and a little bit more in the category of fashion versus Western, which does fit nicely into the demographic of his fan base. So, I think it’s hard to specifically draw a causality between what we’ve done with him and what’s happening in the customer database. But from what we expected to happen to what is happening, there’s certainly some correlation there.”

Taylor Swift was also mentioned on Wednesday’s call when Conroy spoke about lapping last year’s Q1. “It is worth noting that this quarter’s sales results were cycling 33 nights of performances of Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras Tour’ last year across the United States,” the CEO said. “While we have noted in the past that this tour had a negligible impact on our business, it is encouraging to see the strength in sales as we went up against the excitement from her tour last year.”

This comes as Boot Barn beat its earnings expectations in the first quarter of fiscal 2025.

According to the Irvine, Calif.-based footwear company, net sales in the first quarter increased 10.3 percent to $423.4 million from $383.7 million in the prior-year period. Net income in the period was $38.9 million, or $1.26 per diluted share, compared to net income of $34.3 million, or $1.13 per diluted share in the prior-year period.

In terms of category performance, Conroy noted on Wednesday’s call that the company saw sequential improvement across virtually every major product department led by men’s Western boots and apparel, which comped positive mid-single digits. Ladies’ Western boots comped positive low single digits in the quarter, while ladies’ apparel saw a low single-digit decline in comp sales, which was a significant improvement from the fourth quarter of fiscal ’24, the CEO said.

As for Boot Barn’s work business, Conroy added that the category is “nearly flat” but saw some sequential improvement from Q3 into Q4 and then slight improvement from Q4 into Q1.

“Work apparel, which is much smaller than work boots, is negative low single digits,” Conroy told analysts. “We are making some changes to the assortment there and hope to get that back to a positive number in the next couple of quarters. Again, we’d rather those numbers be positive than negative. They’re not massive drags on our overall comp right now though, so that’s good. So hopefully, we’ll get those turned around in the next couple of months.”

In light of its first quarter results, Boot Barn is raising its guidance for the full fiscal year. Now, the company expects total sales for fiscal 2025 between $1.816 billion to $1.850 billion, representing growth of 8.9 percent to 11 percent over the prior year. This is up from its previous guidance of total sales for the year of $1.766 billion to $1.800 billion, representing growth of 5.9 percent to 8 percent over the prior year.