Dick's Sporting Goods 2010 Annual Report Download - page 29

We typically staff our Dick’s stores with a store manager, two sales managers, a sales support manager, seven sales leaders and
approximately 50 full-time and part-time sales associates for a single-level store and proportionately more supervisory roles and
associates for a two-level store, depending on store volume and time of year. The operations of each store are supervised by one
of 45 district managers, each of whom reports to one of six regional vice-presidents of store operations who are located in the
field. The regional vice presidents report to the vice president of field operations, who in turn reports directly to the senior vice
president of operations.
Support Services
We believe that we further differentiate our stores from other large format sporting goods stores by offering support services for
the products we sell. We offer a complete range of expert golf services, including custom club fitting, club repair, grip installation
and shaft installation for drivers, irons and putters. We also have certified club technicians on hand. We offer private lessons with
our PGA and LPGA professionals in our Golf Galaxy Stores.
Our prototype Dick’s stores feature bicycle maintenance and repair stations on the sales floor, allowing our bicycle mechanics to
service bicycles in addition to assisting customers. We believe that these maintenance and repair stations are one of our most
effective selling tools by enhancing the credibility of our specialty store concept and giving assurance to our customers that we
can repair and tune the bicycles they purchase.
At our Dick’s stores, we also string tennis racquets and lacrosse sticks, sharpen ice skates, provide home delivery and assembly
of fitness equipment, provide scope mounting and bore sighting services, cut arrows, sell hunting and fishing licenses and fill CO
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tanks for paintball.
Site Selection and Store Locations
We select geographic markets and store sites on the basis of demographic information, quality and nature of neighboring tenants,
store visibility and accessibility. Key demographics include population density, household income, age and average number of
occupants per household. In addition to these demographics, golf participation rates are considered in selecting sites for our Golf
Galaxy stores. We seek to locate our Dick’s stores in primary retail centers with an emphasis on co-tenants including major
discount retailers such as Wal-Mart or Target, or specialty retailers from other categories such as Best Buy, Lowe’s or Staples.
We seek to balance our expansion of Dick’s stores between new and existing markets. In our existing markets, we add stores as
necessary to cover appropriate market areas. By clustering stores, we seek to take advantage of economies of scale in
advertising, promotion, distribution and supervisory costs. We seek to locate stores within separate trade areas within each
metropolitan area, in order to establish long-term market penetration. We generally seek to expand in geographically contiguous
areas to build on our experience in the same or nearby regions. We believe that local knowledge is an important part of success.
In considering new regions, we locate our stores in areas we believe are underserved. In addition to larger metropolitan areas, we
also target smaller population centers in which we locate single stores, generally in regional shopping centers with a wide
regional draw.
Marketing and Advertising
Our marketing program for Dick’s stores is designed to promote our selection of brand name products at competitive prices. The
program is centered on newspaper advertising supplemented by direct mail and seasonal use of local and national television and
radio. Our advertising strategy is focused on national television and other media campaigns, weekly newspaper advertising
utilizing multi-page color inserts and standard run of press advertising with an emphasis on key shopping periods such as the
Christmas season, Father’s Day, back-to-school and on specific sales and promotional events including our annual Golf-a-thon
sale.
We cluster stores in major markets to enable us to employ our advertising strategy on a cost-effective basis through the use of
newspaper, local and national television and radio advertising. We advertise in major metropolitan newspapers as well as in
regional newspapers circulated in areas surrounding our store locations. Our newspaper advertising typically consists of weekly
promotional advertisements with full-color inserts. Our television advertising is generally concentrated during a promotional event
or key shopping period. At other times, we advertise on television and radio nationally to highlight seasonal sports initiatives.
Radio advertising is used primarily to publicize specific promotions in conjunction with newspaper advertising or to announce a
public relations promotion or grand opening. Vendor payments under cooperative advertising arrangements with us, as well as
vendor participation in sponsoring sporting events and programs, have contributed to our advertising leverage.
Dick’s Sporting Goods, Inc. ¬2010 Annual Report 9