Dick's Sporting Goods built a $13.7 billion business by treating every customer as a human being first and a transaction second.
At NRF's Big Show this past week, CEO Ed Stack shared a signature event in Dick's history.
A kid walked into the store and stole a baseball glove. The manager caught him and brought him back. Ed's dad asked the kid why he stole it.
"I just want to play baseball," the kid said.
Stack's dad told him to go back through the store and pick out a baseball and a bat too.
"It's never just a baseball glove," Stack says now.
That moment in Binghamton, New York shaped everything Dick's became. Ed Stack bought those two small bait and tackle shops from his dad in 1984. He's been CEO for 49 years.
The philosophy never changed. A retailer that sees beyond transactions to the humans making them. The kid who needs to play unwatched. The family that's struggling. The community that needs places where kids can be kids.
Stack runs his company from the bottom of a diamond.
Not a metaphorical diamond. An actual organizational chart shaped like a diamond. Customer-facing employees at the top. Him at the bottom.
"The further you are from the customer," he says, "the less you talk and the more you listen."
This used to be how great retailers thought. Charles Buffum opened his department store in Long Beach in 1904, then served as mayor from 1921 to 1924. His daughter Dorothy Buffum Chandler built the Los Angeles Music Center.
Marshall Field donated land for the University of Chicago and funded the Field Museum. On the day of Field's funeral in 1906, every store along State Street closed and the Chicago Board of Trade suspended trading.
These retailers understood their stores existed within communities, not above them. Stack still operates that way.
Stack's House of Sport concept took eight years to develop. He told the designers: "Build me a store that would kill us if a competitor built it first."
Each 150,000-square-foot location has hockey rinks, soccer fields, batting cages, and rock climbing walls. Not because it maximizes profit per square foot. Because Stack believes kids need places to play.
Dick's now operates 35 House of Sport locations. They're adding 15 more in 2026, targeting 75-100 by 2027.
Most retailers ask: What's the minimum we can do? Stack asks: What would be so good that losing it to a competitor would hurt?
One question protects margin. The other builds something worth protecting.
In 2020, Stack read a study showing that 20% of U.S. high schools have no sports programs. He said: "Kids need a place to play and be coached."
Now 3 million kids play in Dick's-funded sports programs through the Sports Matter Foundation. Not as customers. As kids who need a place to play.
This isn't charity as marketing. This is a company that genuinely believes youth sports matter and puts resources behind that belief. The programs exist whether or not they drive foot traffic.
Stack's diamond-shaped org chart isn't a gimmick. It's how the company actually operates.
They don't tolerate "brilliant jerks" no matter how capable they are. New hires have to demonstrate they're team players who don't care what position they play. Using a football analogy, when Stack interviews someone, he asks: "Could you play left tackle?" Because sometimes the company needs you to do something you don't want to do.
Stack's other rule: You can't say "no." You can say "yes, if..." as in, "We could do that if we can solve for X, Y, and Z." Because "no" kills collaboration.
Not all retailers are so aligned...
Saks Global recently filed for bankruptcy after loading up on debt and leaving vendors unpaid for over a year. Hudson's Bay was liquidated after 355 years. 9,300 workers got zero severance while executives collected $3 million in bonuses.
Two completely different philosophies about what retail is for: one for building communities, the other for extracting.
Stack's Northstar: "Community and product." Every decision gets filtered through that lens.
"Is it going to make me a better player? Am I going to feel better? Is it going to mean something to me?" Stack asks. "Value has no price."
When they bought Foot Locker, it wasn't for financial engineering. It was to access global markets and serve neighborhoods that Dick's couldn't reach with their current format.
This is what happens when a retailer is run by someone who grew up in the stores rather than someone who sees stores as assets to be monetized. Every acquisition serves the customer mission.
Every new store answers the question: How do we serve more communities?
Dick's could have taken a different direction. They could have sold the real estate. They could have loaded up on debt to make acquisitions. They could have extracted maximum value and moved on.
They didn't. They built hockey rinks for kids.
Every retailer makes this choice. Every day.
Are we building for stakeholders (the workers, the customers, the vendors, the communities) or are we extracting for stockholders who want their money out fast?
One choice builds companies that last 49 years and put 3 million kids in sports.
The other leaves empty buildings.
Retail isn't dying. Stores that thrive are run by people who remember what Stack never forgot:
You sit at the bottom of the diamond. You listen more than you talk. You build stores that would kill you if a competitor built them first. You build stores that would kill you if a competitor built them first.
Dorothy Buffum Chandler built a music center. Marshall Field built a museum and a university. Ed Stack built hockey rinks and sports programs for kids who need somewhere to play - not perform.
Same philosophy across a century: your business exists within a community, not above it.
The alternative is what we're watching unfold right now. Operators who extract value, load companies with debt, and walk away. They leave behind empty buildings, unemployed workers, and communities that lost the charitable giving those stores once provided.
Stack's dad gave a kid who stole a glove a bat and ball too.
That choice, made decades ago in Binghamton, is still shaping one of the most successful retailers in America.
It's never just a baseball glove. It's never just a transaction. It's always about the people on the other side of the counter and the communities they live in.
That's what great retail looks like.