BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Sneaker and streetwear chain Snipes opens its third Lehigh Valley store Thursday at the Lehigh Shopping Center on West Union Boulevard.
Store manager Tanya Terrell told The Morning Call on Monday that the store would open Thursday.
Power 99 FM’s DJ Doc B is scheduled to appear at the store Saturday from noon to 2 p.m., with music and gift card giveaways, according to his Instagram and Facebook posts.
The Bethlehem store extends the reach of a company whose Pennsylvania stores are mostly in Philadelphia. Of the 33 stores listed on Snipes’ Pennsylvania store locator, 23 are in the city, about 70%.
The locator showed one Lehigh Valley store as of late Wednesday, at the Palmer Park Mall in Palmer Township, listed under an Easton address. It did not include Bethlehem or the chain’s store at Plaza West Shopping Center, 1616 W. Allen St., in Allentown.
Snipes job postings list openings at both addresses. In Bethlehem, the chain is hiring manager-in-training, a third key holder, and stock workers.
The company has not posted hours for the Bethlehem store or said publicly how many people it will employ there.
Snipes takes 6,720 square feet at the Bethlehem center, according to a Brixmor Property Group leasing brochure for the property.
The 373,766-square-foot center at 2100-2184 W. Union Blvd., in the Lehigh County part of the city, lists Giant Food, Marshalls/HomeGoods, Savers Thrift Stores, Staples, PetSmart and Dollar Tree among its tenants.
The same brochure lists two spaces as available, at 83,512 and 12,739 square feet. Together they total 96,251 square feet, about a quarter of the center.
According to its website, Snipes sells men’s, women’s, and children’s sneakers, clothing, hats, and accessories from brands including Nike, Jordan, adidas, New Balance, and Puma.
Snipes’ ties to Philadelphia go back to its arrival in the U.S. The chain opened its first store in Essen, Germany, in 1998 and entered the U.S. in 2019 by buying KicksUSA, a sneaker chain that opened in 2002, according to the company’s website.
That purchase allowed Snipes “to expand into the U.S. market and place its headquarters in Philadelphia,” the website says.
The company later added Detroit’s Mr. Alan’s, New York-area chain Jimmy Jazz and New England’s Expressions. Its website says it now has more than 300 stores across the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest.