Dick’s Sporting Goods CEO Ed Stack talks business, community, gun control and more

Dick’s Sporting Goods Chairman and CEO Ed Stack returned Tuesday to where it all started: his hometown of Binghamton and the community where his father launched a small business that would grow to become the multibillion-dollar Dick’s retail chain.

As featured speaker of the Binghamton University Forum luncheon at the Holiday Inn Binghamton, Stack gave a packed banquet room of about 400 Forum members and guests a behind-the-scenes look at Dick’s transformation from one small shop in Binghamton to a publicly traded company with more than 800 stores in the U.S. Stack also provided insight on the company’s decision to stop selling the type of guns used in mass shootings, and he promoted his first book, a revealing memoir called It’s How We Play the Game, which was released Oct. 8.

In 1948, Stack’s father, Richard, used $300 his grandmother had stashed in a cookie jar to open a bait and tackle shop on Court Street in Binghamton, near where a Dick’s Sporting Goods store is now. The elder Stack expanded and renamed the original business Dick’s Army-Navy & Sporting Goods. When Ed Stack was 13 years old, his father put him to work.

“I hated every minute of it. I wanted nothing to do with that business,” Stack said. Instead, he dreamed of going to law school after graduating from St. John Fisher College in Rochester, N.Y. But over time, he grew to love the business and the opportunities it provided to make a difference, he said.

In 1984, Stack took over when the business consisted of only two stores. By the early 1990s, the company had grown significantly, expanding its footprint beyond upstate New York. In 1994, Dick’s moved its headquarters from Binghamton to Pittsburgh. The company went public in 2002. Today, it’s the nation’s largest sporting goods retailer, with nearly $9 billion in annual sales.

Dick’s road to success has never been a straight line, but rather a path filled with many ups and downs, Stack recalled. The company’s rapid expansion outpaced its distribution capabilities. Dick’s faced fierce competition from other chains as well as online retailers. It also had to adapt quickly to meet the seasonal needs of suppliers and customers while navigating challenging financial conditions that threatened to put the company out of business — twice.

Stack admitted that one of those times was after the headquarters moved to Pittsburgh; the company “grew too fast” and he made some “stupid” business decisions.

Stack noted, however, that his focus has not just been on merely growing sales but, perhaps more important, on making a difference in communities:

● In February 2018, after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., Stack announced the company would no longer sell assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines or guns to anyone under the age of 21. Dick’s also said it destroyed $5 million in assault-style rifles in the chain’s inventory. Knowing the announcement would result in lost money and controversy, Stack reiterated Tuesday the decision was “absolutely the right thing to do” and he has no regrets. “We thought the system was broken,” he said.

Stack got noticeably choked up when he recounted how, after the announcement, he and his wife met with the parents of the children who were killed. “I promised to keep the (national) conversation going,” he said. “It may not stop all these mass shootings, but if it saves one life, it’s all worth it.”

● Stack said he is donating all proceeds from the sale of his book to the Dick’s Sporting Goods Foundation’s Sports Matter program, which funds financially strapped sports programs around the country.

In 2013, when severe budget issues led a school district in Anchorage, Alaska, to end funding for its girls ice hockey program, the Dick’s Sporting Goods Foundation announced it would fully fund the girls ice hockey teams through the 2017−18 season. Dick’s does not have a store in Alaska, Stack noted.

Sports and other extracurricular activities give children places to go and things to do to stay out of trouble and build self-esteem, Stack said. “One way to keep our kids in school is to keep these sports programs going.”

● Locally, Dick’s operates an approximately 630,000-square-foot distribution center in Conklin that employs several hundred people. The company is also title sponsor of the PGA Tour Champions golf event held annually in August at En-Joie Golf Course in Endicott.

● Stack’s sister Kim Myers, who lives in Greater Binghamton, noted at the Forum event that Dick’s sent “truck after truck” with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of sneakers, backpacks and clothing to the region after flooding in 2011 caused devastating damage and losses for many families and children.

She said: “He’s never forgotten where he came from.”