Dick’s Sporting Goods is starting to build out its roster of House of Sport locations, opening nine of its new hands-on stores that permit customers to try out gear on real fields and to do some rock climbing in between shopping. The Coraopolis, Pennsylvania-based retailer is in a major expansion mode with House of Sport, roughly 100,000-square-foot stores that feature not only a wide assortment of products but on-site offerings such as a climbing wall, multiple golf bays with TrackManTM simulators, and multisport cages that can be used for baseball, softball, lacrosse and soccer to give customers an opportunity to try products while measuring and tracking their performance. Dick’s expects to open between 75 to 100 House of Sport stores by 2027, following the trend of retailers looking to engage shoppers by letting them interact with merchandise.
Dick’s held grand openings in July and this month for House of Sport stores in 8 new cities. Those locations join the first three House of Sport stores in Victor, New York; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Minnetonka, Minnesota. Each grand opening kicked off with in-store and parking lot activities and games, mystery gift card giveaways and sweepstakes, and celebrity athlete appearances.
Dicks — which has more than 850 namesake stores, Golf Galaxy, Public Lands, Moosejaw, Going Going Gone! and Warehouse Sale locations — reported its fiscal second-quarter earnings on Tuesday. Net sales were up nearly 4%, to $3.22 billion. Comparable store sales rose roughly 2%. “These are solid numbers that make Dick’s one of the continued winners in retail,” Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, said in a note on Tuesday.
“This is especially so since second quarter sales are up by an impressive 42.7% since pre-pandemic 2019. Over this time, Dick’s has increased its share of spending and customers across almost all the sporting categories it operates in. This includes clothing and footwear, where Dick’s has made some extensive inroads not just into sporting related apparel but into items for casual use.”