The inevitable news came out recently that the Finish Line would be exiting the running specialty business and would be seeking a buyer for the JackRabbit brand. As a former JackRabbit employee, it brings up a range of emotions to see this go down, but by and large the reaction I have seen is either a condemnation of Finish Line's involvement in the industry at all, or some flavor of doom and gloom about what this means for brick and mortar running specialty retail in general. I hope I can give some insight into how this all happened, and my thoughts on the future.
I'm not saying that I am the absolute authority on this, but I've had quite a history riding the JackRabbit tsunami. In 2012, I moved back home to Virginia and took an hourly job at a running store. By the end of that year, I was told that the owner of 29 years would be selling the business to the Running Specialty Group, owned by the Gart Capital Properties. I became the store manager and rather than reporting directly to the owner, I know had to answer to district management, remote buyers, and a variety of departmental VPs. I want to make it very clear that, although there were times when the sheer amount of cogs in the machine slowed our progress, the team that they had assembled in that day was damn impressive. This was not a situation where people with no passion for running were trying to dictate to us how to do our job. Across the board, our business model was analyzed and tweaked. Sometimes we were asked to make small changes to the merchandising in the store due to the success that it had in anther market. Other times, standout points of service at my store were becoming standard operating procedures in other markets.
I had the opportunity to visit the RSG "HQ" in that year, and the atmosphere was full of ambition and (I mean this in the most complimentary way that I can) cockiness. I suppose I had a little bit of that going on too. When I was asked where I saw myself with the company in five years, I replied, "I want people to look at how big RSG is, and say that I had something to do with that." According to the line graph projected onto the screen that day, by now in 2017, RSG would be nearing 200 stores across the country through a mix of acquisitions and organic store openings. Most importantly, this was not a bunch of greedy capitalists seeing an untapped well of dollars in people's desire to take up running. Everyone present in those days were the type of folks who, if you asked them what they would do for a career if they could choose anything, they would say "I want to be around the sport of running."
Maybe I'm just easy to drink the Kool-Aid, but things were working and I was finding new opportunities. After two years managing my store in Virginia, I was elevated to a team that would oversee the transition of newly acquired stores. During six months, we expanded to close to 75 stores. This was eye-opening in a variety of ways. I got to meet some fantastic people, including many household names for those on LRC. I was, however, often put into the position of being the bad guy coming in to ruin the local running store. I wasn't that guy! I loved running stores! I still do! I don't know if there's a way to see how many posts I have made on this board over the past 14 or so years, but I am a running dork! And yet, when people heard I worked for RSG, I became the enemy.
Shortly after Finish Line bought all of the Garts' control of the company, the aggressive expansion ceased. It was as if we were travelling westward across the United States, heading for the great West Coast, and then stopping in Kansas and saying, "Eh. Let's just stay here and try and figure ourselves out." Don't get me wrong, there are great running stores in Kansas! I've been to them! But the fire sort of went out as far as RSG was concerned. We now had JackRabbit. We already had RunOn, Boulder Running Company, Running Fit, and Blue Mile.
We went stagnant. We focused on what we had and tried to squeeze every dime out of every sale. Again, I have no ethical objection to this. We were still putting people in the right shoes. We were still cheering them on at races. It's just that everyone was hyper-conscious of how each interaction was affecting our bottom line, and that it would be noticed, good or bad, by the higher-ups. Meanwhile, public perception got worse and worse. It is very easy to convince someone that, because a nearby store is owned by a company far away, that they are not looking out for your best interests.
Who's to blame for this? Mostly, I'd say it is competing running stores. It's the low-hanging fruit. "Shop local. Don't Support Corporate Running Stores." But what about all the people like me? I can say now looking back that I had no internal shame in getting a check that said "Finish Line" on it, but GOOD GRIEF, did I catch some stuff from other people who sought to make me out to be some sort of shill.
Shortly after returning home from the New York City Marathon Expo weekend, I was working at my hometown Richmond Marathon expo when I received a call from our new VP. We spoke briefly about all the things I just laid out, and that I felt that I was feeling like I did early on, that there was a ton of new potential for JackRabbit to grow. About two weeks later he called me to tell me that I would no longer be working for the company.
Over these past few days, I have wondered a lot about how the news of JackRabbit's latest purchase should feel for me. Should I say "I told you so" to the folks at Finish Line that repeatedly gave customers reasons to view us as "corporate?" Should I revel in the potential that the whole thing will just fall apart and they close down all the stores? No, the more I think about it, I just get a bit downtrodden about the ridiculous amount of talent and know-how that people had just a few years ago. Just as I sometimes think that the popularity of the sport of running is so often held back by the infighting and bickering among it's most adamant followers, it seems that even the act of buying shoes for runners brings on the same kind of territorial and political battles.
I don't know what the future holds for the great RSG/JackRabbit experiment, but I surely hope that all the folks I have met through my days there are going to see some positive come out of this latest news. And I hope that maybe a few people will read this and realize that pretty much anyone who decides to work as a running store associate, a corporate apparel buyer, or even a payroll administrator for a running company is probably a person you would want to have a drink with. We're all on the same team, I guess.
That's pretty much my piece on that, anyway. Thanks.