Ed Stack stands with his arms crossed, surveying the wall of colorful basketball shoes near the entrance of Dick’s Sporting Goods’ House of Sport in Pittsburgh’s Ross Park Mall. The vast selection of around 2,400 pairs of Nike Air Jordans, Under Armour Currys and more — known as the “Footwear Deck” — is a key part of Dick’s’ strategy to stand out in the digital age. A separate soccer-skewed section, House of Cleats, downstairs has at least 300 other pairs. “People really want to feel it, touch it, try it on,” and experience it, explains Stack, 69, Dick’s’ executive chairman.

That’s why there’s also a 31.5-foot indoor climbing wall visible directly over Stack’s shoulder, nearby batting cages, golf bays, and even a 18,000 square foot outdoor sports field for customers to use. Plus there are technicians on hand to restring racquets, lace baseball gloves and sharpen ice skates.

Aaron Kotowski for Forbes

These bells and whistles are features of a new jumbo store format that Dick’s is opening across the country. The House of Sport is double to triple the size of a regular 50,000 square foot location. The Pittsburgh mega-store, the closest one to Dick’s’ corporate headquarters–where Forbes interviewed Stack in November–opened in April in a long abandoned Sears; it’s the third largest Dick’s location to date at 140,000 square feet. The biggest, at nearly 150,000 square feet, is in Salem, New Hampshire, plus there are 15 more of these behemoth complexes already open with plans to retrofit up to 100 of its 725 U.S. locations by 2027. (Dick’s has another 136 “specialty stores,” including Golf Galaxy and outdoor chain Public Lands.) Forbes estimates the retailer will spend nearly $2 billion on this expansion.

Dick’s is doubling down on brick-and-mortar at a time when many retailers are downsizing or shuttering locations - more than 6,480 stores in the U.S. closed this year, the highest number since 2020, according to data from Coresight research.

It’s just the latest gamble from Stack, who has spent four decades obsessing about ways to beat competitors; he bought the company from his father, the original founder, in 1984. “I was always an athlete, a mediocre athlete but I loved the competition,” he says, sipping a glass bottle of Coca-Cola. (The only sport he plays these days is golf.) “Ed is always pushing himself to be better, his company to be better, his team to be better and his partners to be better,” says Nike’s CEO Elliott Hill, describing him as “courageous and competitive.” He’s known Stack for 20 years; Nike is a key partner of Dick’s, accounting for about 24% of its $13 billion in 2023 sales.

Stack instilled this mindset in his management team, too. “We’re constantly looking around corners. And we joke, we say it's not a joke, but we have what we call productive paranoia,” says Lauren Hobart, Dick’s CEO since 2021. “But that's actually the root of a lot of our success. We don't take a lot of time looking backward or resting on our laurels.”

“Ed Stack is a genius who inherited a mom and pop sporting goods store and turned it into a national retail powerhouse,” says Phil Knight, founder of Nike, which sold about $3 billion of its branded product at Dick’s last year.

It’s been a winning formula. Dick’s, which has already outlived a number of now-defunct rivals like Sports Authority, Herman’s and Modell’s, is one of just a handful of retailers to record consistent same-store sales growth since the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Morgan Stanley equity analyst Simeon Gutman. (Others include Walmart, Costco and O’Reilly Auto Parts.) Revenue is expected to hit a record of up to $13.3 billion this year, up from $8.8 billion in 2019, a more than 50% jump. And the stock is up nearly 800% in that same time, including 60% in the past year. Stack, who has not sold a single share of his voting stock since taking the company public in 2002 and remains the biggest individual shareholder, is now worth $5.4 billion.

Business didn’t look so good back in 2018. Sales were stagnating as it fought for relevance against online retailers like Amazon and Walmart and began phasing guns out of their stores. It also took a hit as some of its brands began selling directly to consumers or, in Under Armour’s case, distributing to lower-priced stores like Kohl’s. Stack quickly took action. “The brief I gave everybody was we need to sit down and we need to design the concept that will kill Dick’s Sporting Goods,” Stack, dressed in a plaid navy suit, explains from a conference room hidden behind a set of large, wooden doors in the back of the Pittsburgh store. “If someone opened the store that we’re going to design across the street........

© Forbes