In 1948, Ed
Stack's father, Richard, started Dick's Bait and Tackle in Binghamton,
New York, with $300 borrowed from his grandmother. A few years later,
Dick expanded to a second location. In 1984, Ed bought the two stores
from his father. Today DICK's Sporting Goods is the largest sporting
goods retailer in the country with over 800 locations and close to $9
billion in sales.
It's How You Play the Game tells the absorbing
story of a complicated founder and an ambitious son--one who
transformed a business by making it more than a business, conceiving it
as a force for good in the communities it serves. The transformation Ed
wrought wasn't easy: economic headwinds nearly toppled the chain twice.
But DICK's support for embattled youth sports programs earned the stores
surprising loyalty, and Ed was vocal in sounding the alarm about
schools' underfunding not just of sports but of other extracurriculars,
which earned DICK's even more respect.
Ed's toughest business
decision came in the wake of yet another school shooting; this one at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. The
senseless loss of life devastated Ed on many levels and he decided to
take action. DICK's became the first major retailer to pull all
semi-automatic weapons from its shelves and raise the age of gun
purchase to twenty-one. Despite being a gun owner himself who'd grown up
around firearms, Ed's strategy included destroying the $5 million of
assault-style-type rifles then in DICK's inventory.
It was a profit-risking policy that would earn the outrage of some--even threats of harm--but turn Ed into a national hero.
With
vital lessons for anyone running a business and eye-opening reflections
about what a company owes the people it serves, It's How You Play the
Game is the insightful story of a man who built one of America's most
successful companies by following his heart.