Dick’s Sporting Goods is trying to score with customers who want an engaging, hands-on in-store experience by pushing a big expansion of its House of Sport concept.
Dick’s has been closing its remaining Field & Stream stores, with plans to convert some of them into its House of Sport concept or large-format Dick’s stores by 2024.
The House of Sport concept typically features interactive spaces like a climbing walls, batting cages, golf simulators, and equipment services like baseball glove steaming and racquet stringing. Dick’s intends to open nine House of Sport locations in 2023 by remodeling existing Dick’s and Field & Stream combination stores. At the present time, Dick’s has only three House of Sport locations in New York, Tennessee, and Minnesota, but CEO Lauren Hobart recently stated that House of Sport will be a significant part of Dick’s future growth story.
There are ten more stores in the pipeline for 2024, making a total of 20 additional House of Sport locations over the next two years, and planned locations include Boston, Pittsburgh, Binghamton, and Chesapeake.
Over the next five years, Dick’s envisions opening 75 to 100 house of Sport locations. The concept has become scalable and highly profitable, according to CEO Hobart, who said that Dick’s will be “learning into that growth.”
Recently, Dick’s reported Q4 net sales of $3.6 billion, up 7.3% year over year. Fourth-quarter comp sales grew 5.3% year over year, down from 6.6% growth a year ago. Hobart described the holiday quarter as “a strong ending to another strong year.” The company reported net sales of $12.4 billion for the full year. While that’s less than a 1% rise year over year, it’s a 41% increase from 2019.
in fact, according to executive chairman Ed Stack, 2022 was the largest sales year in Dick’s history.
RetailDive.com, Nate Delesline III
