Dick's Sporting Goods best quarter ever

[ClownLoach]

The one thing I find odd at Dick's is that they remove all their clearance merchandise, which I assume goes to their clearance stores. So after the season, there are few deals to be found. While I think that it's smart not to have clearance merchandise competing with full price merchandising, for us deal hunters, it's a turn off.

I think this has actually been a cornerstone of their success. They keep opening more clearance and outlet stores up to attract the bargain shopper year round instead of just a few months. And they don't have to hold back new goods because of clearance hogging floor space. That's good for sales increases everywhere.

They have clearance items in Reno, they have different "dots" on the items and go as high as 90% off. The stuff I got at Christmas didn't scan correctly but they adjusted the prices with no issue.

Different departments seemed to have different "dot colors" for different percent offs. For instance pink dot in clothing was 90% off but pink dot in hard good area was 50% off.

Here's the thing: they transfer the product out to the clearance store in regions with them once the department gets its next planogram and the new goods come in. Previously they would either have to add more rack and tables to clog up part of the sales floor or wait to set the new planogram if they were inundated with merchandise. So technically these signs are false advertising as the items are never going to hit 90% before they're transferred out unless someone misplaced the item in the store and a customer managed to find it later.

For a smaller market like Reno they might not want to spend on transportation to a clearance center but in larger regions they've added at least one clearance warehouse sale building or an outlet store. Also the clearance centers are not always permanent stores but rather available pop ups. For example they had one in Lakewood CA that was a temporary lease (maybe it was a BB&B or Joann?) which is now closed, but it was never a Dicks location previously. Now it is in Upland at what definitely looks like the former BB&B, the infamous one that held a grand reopening event the day it was added to the store closing list. I'm sure once that landlord finds a tenant they'll move along to another vacant something.

The other real estate strategy I've noticed Dicks employ is the consolidation move into a mall to bring it traffic. It doesn't necessarily happen all at once but they will move two stores into one mall. For example in South Orange County they had two older, small stores. One west of I-5 in Laguna Hills, one east in Ladera Ranch. They opened a two story in the former Saks/Forever 21 at the Mission Viejo mall and combined the two old stores into one nice new one. They wound up making a deal with the landlord to reopen the Laguna Hills location on a month-to-month until a replacement tenant could be found and operated it mainly as a clearance store until Amazon Fresh leased the site. So two local locations moved to the only regional mall in the area, allowing the new store to be an anchor. And the shopping experience at the new store is substantially better as it is bright, airy, and has a much larger selection so it is "worth it" for the customer to drive a bit further and see a lot more product than they were used to before the moves.

[storewanderer]

I think this has actually been a cornerstone of their success. They keep opening more clearance and outlet stores up to attract the bargain shopper year round instead of just a few months. And they don't have to hold back new goods because of clearance hogging floor space. That's good for sales increases everywhere.

They have clearance items in Reno, they have different "dots" on the items and go as high as 90% off. The stuff I got at Christmas didn't scan correctly but they adjusted the prices with no issue.

Different departments seemed to have different "dot colors" for different percent offs. For instance pink dot in clothing was 90% off but pink dot in hard good area was 50% off.

Here's the thing: they transfer the product out to the clearance store in regions with them once the department gets its next planogram and the new goods come in. Previously they would either have to add more rack and tables to clog up part of the sales floor or wait to set the new planogram if they were inundated with merchandise. So technically these signs are false advertising as the items are never going to hit 90% before they're transferred out unless someone misplaced the item in the store and a customer managed to find it later.

For a smaller market like Reno they might not want to spend on transportation to a clearance center but in larger regions they've added at least one clearance warehouse sale building or an outlet store. Also the clearance centers are not always permanent stores but rather available pop ups. For example they had one in Lakewood CA that was a temporary lease (maybe it was a BB&B or Joann?) which is now closed, but it was never a Dicks location previously. Now it is in Upland at what definitely looks like the former BB&B, the infamous one that held a grand reopening event the day it was added to the store closing list. I'm sure once that landlord finds a tenant they'll move along to another vacant something.

The other real estate strategy I've noticed Dicks employ is the consolidation move into a mall to bring it traffic. It doesn't necessarily happen all at once but they will move two stores into one mall. For example in South Orange County they had two older, small stores. One west of I-5 in Laguna Hills, one east in Ladera Ranch. They opened a two story in the former Saks/Forever 21 at the Mission Viejo mall and combined the two old stores into one nice new one. They wound up making a deal with the landlord to reopen the Laguna Hills location on a month-to-month until a replacement tenant could be found and operated it mainly as a clearance store until Amazon Fresh leased the site. So two local locations moved to the only regional mall in the area, allowing the new store to be an anchor. And the shopping experience at the new store is substantially better as it is bright, airy, and has a much larger selection so it is "worth it" for the customer to drive a bit further and see a lot more product than they were used to before the moves.

Some of the items I bought had a color dot that indicated 90% off. It was on some clothing items. It did not scan correctly. They had to change the price.