Dive Brief:

• Footwear retailer DSW Tuesday reported nearly $100 million Q4 sales online and in stores, and its Q4 earnings beat expectations. Same-store sales also beat expectations, seeing a 7.6% rise compared to an expected 2% rise.

• The retailer said its success is due in part to its increased fulfillment from stores, which is also a more expensive route for fulfilling orders, according to president and CEO Mike MacDonald.

• The Columbus-based company aims to mitigate some of those costs by paying closer attention to which stores fulfill online orders, he said.

Dive Insight:

DSW is a shining example of a retailer working diligently to blur its brick-and-mortar and e-commerce, and fulfillment is a big piece in that puzzle. The ship-from-store model — the retailer is shipping about half its e-commerce sales from its 430 stores — is leading to great success, but clearly at a price, according to president-CEO Mike MacDonald, who spoke earlier this week at a conference call with analysts.

Proximity isn’t helping tamp down the costs of shipping from stores rather than fulfillment centers, so the retailer will switch to shipping from stores that have excess inventory of the products ordered online, he said.

MacDonald also said that DSW plans 35 new stores this year, including eight to 10 small-format stores.