New, larger Boot Barn store opens on West Acres campus

080320.B.FF.BOOTBARN01.jpg — Boot Barn now has space to spread out and add more merchandise in its new West Acres mall campus location at 1615 38th St. S., Fargo. (Helmut Schmidt / The Forum)

By Helmut Schmidt

July 31, 2020 at 10:59 AM

FARGO - The new location of Boot Barn is now open on the West Acres mall campus.

The expansive western wear and workwear store, with its nearly 10,000-square-foot sales floor, has gotten good reviews from customers since it opened July 22, store Manager Danielle Fisk said.

“It’s nice to have the bigger space so we can merchandise and customers can see what we have,” Fisk said Friday, July 31.

The store at 1615 38th St. S. is also drawing more people in its significantly more visible location along Interstate 29.

“I actually had a lot of customers that didn’t realize we had a Boot Barn in Fargo,” she said.

(The store has actually been part of the West Acres mall for eight years.)

080320.B.FF.BOOTBARN02.jpg — Boot Barn is now open at 1615 38th St. S., Fargo. The western and workwear retailer has been in Fargo about eight years, but opted to move from its former spot in the West Acres mall to the former Best Buy building on the southeast side of the mall campus. (Helmut Schmidt / The Forum)

Fisk said the added space has meant expanding the selection of cowboy boots and workwear, including fire resistant clothing and work boots.

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Boot Barn’s former mall location in the northwest part of the mall will be taken up by Ragstock, a vintage and recycled clothing retailer founded in Minneapolis. That announcement was made by mall officials in mid-June.

Boot Barn’s new home is the eastern quarter of the building that once housed Best Buy. The building is also home to Foss Swim School. Foss opened on the west side of the structure in October 2019.

Best Buy now occupies former the Sears space and has taken over that retailer’s position as one of the anchors of West Acres.

There are six Boot Barns in North Dakota (Fargo, Grand Forks, Bismarck, Minot, Dickinson and Williston ), and two in Minnesota (St. Cloud, and the Twin Cities suburb of Bloomington).

Boot Barn, headquartered in Irvine, Calif., was founded in 1978. According to a recent federal filing, the company had 259 stores in 35 states as of March 28, 2020. Boot Barn opened 19 stores in fiscal 2019 and acquired another. Its stores average 10,500 square feet.

By Helmut Schmidt

Helmut Schmidt is a business reporter at The Forum. He’s a German import, arriving in the United States about a decade after the Volkswagen beetle. After graduating high school in Cottage Grove, Minn., he served in the U.S. Army as a microwave radio operator and repairman. He earned a journalism degree from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, then started at the Albert Lea Tribune in southeastern Minnesota, where he served three years as its managing editor. At The Forum, he has covered various beats, including K-12 schools, city government, cops and courts, and the business community. Contact Helmut at 701-241-5583 or hschmidt@forumcomm.com.