Dick's Sporting Goods best quarter ever

[ClownLoach]

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/14/dicks-s ... ng%20goods

Dick's reported their best results ever came in this past holiday season. Seems like they're taking over a lot of mall space and getting a lot out of it. They're also benefiting from larger megastore type formats and expanding their rollout (instead of messing with reduced assortment small formats). Maybe malls aren't really dead, just a lot of their tenants are? And maybe customers still want big boxes, but only good ones?

Dick's, Lego, Apple are heavy mall tenants and do incredibly well there. They also have a healthier mix of non-mall real estate too. Interesting when you think about the fight for Macy's Inc.

[storewanderer]

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/14/dicks-s ... ng%20goods

Dick's reported their best results ever came in this past holiday season. Seems like they're taking over a lot of mall space and getting a lot out of it. They're also benefiting from larger megastore type formats and expanding their rollout (instead of messing with reduced assortment small formats). Maybe malls aren't really dead, just a lot of their tenants are? And maybe customers still want big boxes, but only good ones?

Dick's, Lego, Apple are heavy mall tenants and do incredibly well there. They also have a healthier mix of non-mall real estate too. Interesting when you think about the fight for Macy's Inc.

I do not like Dick's but my observations of their stores this holiday season saw good traffic and people spending hundreds of dollars at a time paying what looked like MSRP for most of what they were buying. It was pretty impressive.

Dick's was staffed, fully stocked/merchandised, and ready for business. Many mall stores were not staffed well, messy, not stocked well, and not all that ready for business. Dick's has a wider product offer of items not available elsewhere in the mall too, in addition to the clothing/shoes they offer that are sold elsewhere in the mall. I think that wider product offer further engages customers and keeps them in the store (and at the mall) longer.

I've been saying this about malls for a while. The issue is the store mix in US malls. US malls went for a clothing heavy format and rather specific clothing types at that, and became irrelevant to many consumers. In other countries, malls have a variety of essential and non-essential type stores.

[veteran+]

I prefer REI...................

Recent visit was the best retail experience I have had in a long time.

Busy store, flawless presentation, quality merchandise at pretty good prices, friendly helpful Knowledgeable employees, fast check out, great parking.

For a moment I thought I transported to another time

[ClownLoach]

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/14/dicks-s ... ng%20goods

Dick's reported their best results ever came in this past holiday season. Seems like they're taking over a lot of mall space and getting a lot out of it. They're also benefiting from larger megastore type formats and expanding their rollout (instead of messing with reduced assortment small formats). Maybe malls aren't really dead, just a lot of their tenants are? And maybe customers still want big boxes, but only good ones?

Dick's, Lego, Apple are heavy mall tenants and do incredibly well there. They also have a healthier mix of non-mall real estate too. Interesting when you think about the fight for Macy's Inc.

I think that wider product offer further engages customers and keeps them in the store (and at the mall) longer.

I've been saying this about malls for a while. The issue is the store mix in US malls. US malls went for a clothing heavy format and rather specific clothing types at that, and became irrelevant to many consumers. In other countries, malls have a variety of essential and non-essential type stores.

Exactly. This is also symbolic of how the poorly run US department store chains have made themselves largely irrelevant. Think about back when they sold a variety of items, large kitchen assortment, electronics, sporting goods, quality furniture (not the wacky $5K and over couches I saw at Macy's last week which look no better than Ikea furniture). They pulled all this product and massed out more clothing. The badly managed malls quickly allowed themselves to become nearly all clothing too. Before you know it, the entire mall is clothing overload and left with nothing to offset changes in that business, trends, etc.

It's been a few years but when I was in Quebec I saw some very busy and successful malls that were outside of the core Montréal island in the suburbs. I don't think the population of those areas was huge. The malls had absolutely zero vacancies. They had lots of clothing stores, department stores, restaurants both sit down and food court style, sporting goods stores, Best Buy, a Canadian Staples (Bureau En Gros), a Rona store (former Lowe's Canada), a grocery store, movie theater complex, etc. I think they even had a state run Liquor store. The diversity of the store mix is why they are still successful.

[ClownLoach]

I prefer REI...................

Recent visit was the best retail experience I have had in a long time.

Busy store, flawless presentation, quality merchandise at pretty good prices, friendly helpful Knowledgeable employees, fast check out, great parking.

For a moment I thought I transported to another time

My issue with REI is inconsistency. Some stores are large, spacious, have a great selection and excellent service. Others are small, don't have enough to choose from, and have service with a bad attitude. I experienced the bad attitude at the Seattle flagship where I guess I wasn't wearing expensive brands, didn't look fit enough, or looked like I was from out of town. I must have appeared to not be "good enough" to warrant service. I had the same poor experience in two Orange County stores, surly and snide attitude. The service on the floor is okay, sometimes very good, but the cashier counter is almost universally surly as if they've been there all day and you're the last customer before they get to go home. I see these stores pile up thousands of returns which then get sold at a tent sale a couple times each year, indicating to me that their inconsistent service leads to high return rates which in turn inflate the prices they charge the customer.

[babs]

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.

[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.

[Super S]

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/14/dicks-s ... ng%20goods

Dick's reported their best results ever came in this past holiday season. Seems like they're taking over a lot of mall space and getting a lot out of it. They're also benefiting from larger megastore type formats and expanding their rollout (instead of messing with reduced assortment small formats). Maybe malls aren't really dead, just a lot of their tenants are? And maybe customers still want big boxes, but only good ones?

Dick's, Lego, Apple are heavy mall tenants and do incredibly well there. They also have a healthier mix of non-mall real estate too. Interesting when you think about the fight for Macy's Inc.

I have noticed how Dick's is expanding around the Northwest, first by taking over many of the G.I. Joe's (later Joe's Sporting Goods) locations, then by opening in a variety of malls, including malls like Washington Square and Clackamas Town Center in the Portland area, as well as malls of every type in the Seattle-Tacoma area, including Tacoma Mall, South Hill Mall, The Commons at Federal Way, as well as Capital Mall in Olympia. I find the fact they are betting on mall space, including some struggling malls, to be interesting.

[babs]

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/14/dicks-s ... ng%20goods

Dick's reported their best results ever came in this past holiday season. Seems like they're taking over a lot of mall space and getting a lot out of it. They're also benefiting from larger megastore type formats and expanding their rollout (instead of messing with reduced assortment small formats). Maybe malls aren't really dead, just a lot of their tenants are? And maybe customers still want big boxes, but only good ones?

Dick's, Lego, Apple are heavy mall tenants and do incredibly well there. They also have a healthier mix of non-mall real estate too. Interesting when you think about the fight for Macy's Inc.

I have noticed how Dick's is expanding around the Northwest, first by taking over many of the G.I. Joe's (later Joe's Sporting Goods) locations, then by opening in a variety of malls, including malls like Washington Square and Clackamas Town Center in the Portland area, as well as malls of every type in the Seattle-Tacoma area, including Tacoma Mall, South Hill Mall, The Commons at Federal Way, as well as Capital Mall in Olympia. I find the fact they are betting on mall space, including some struggling malls, to be interesting.

They are moving their Delta Meadows store to Jantzen Beach in the old ToysRUS/BabiesRUS building. Interesting location that's probably a better location today but if the Interstate bridge project happens Jantzen Beach will no longer be easy to reach.

[storewanderer]

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.