Brynn Levin

Owned

SWOT Analysis: Dick’s Sporting Goods

Strengths:

  • Strong Brand Presence
    • Dick’s Sporting Goods has a strong brand presence, making it highly recognizable and trusted by many consumers. The brand has established itself as the go-to destination for people seeking sports and outdoor gear. It has loyal customers, which is beneficial when considering competitors in the market.
  • Diverse Array of Product Offerings
    • The company sells a wide selection of athletic equipment, apparel, footwear, and outdoor gear, making it easy to be a one-stop shop for many customers. Its extensive product selection ensures the brand meets the needs of consumers and appeals to wider audiences, bringing in more business. 
  • Strategic Growth Initiatives
    • Dick’s Sporting Goods has strategic growth initiatives. For instance, in 2025, they acquired Foot Locker for $2.5 billion. The acquisition was completed to appeal to international customers since Foot Locker had 2,400 stores in 20 countries, while Dick’s had a limited international presence. It also allows the brand to be more associated with sneaker culture. This type of business decision shows that Dick’s Sporting Goods has a long-term growth strategy as it wants to maintain a strong competitive advantage in the market.
  • Transformed Brick and Mortar Stores to Meet Digital Behaviors
    • Dick’s Sporting Goods has an app that allows customers to see what sizes of shoes are in stock by a simple scan. Stores also offer a buy online, pickup in store option. By innovating its stores to keep up with the changing consumer behavior, their stores continue to be appealing to the public. Successful physical stores also give the company the opportunity for new technological advancements, which is pivotal in the digital age. 
  • Values Immersive and Product-Focused Experiences, Blending Experiential with Retail
    • In 2021, the company opened a new concept store called Dick’s House of Sport, where customers can engage in multi-sport experiences and still shop various sports gear. The store includes turf track and field, batting cage, rock-climbing wall, ice rink, and golf-stimulator. The company also opened another speciality store called Public Lands that same year. This store is different in that it focuses more on the outdoor aspect of the brand versus sports. Customers can shop for Dick’s Sporting Goods outdoor gear and engage in unique experiences such as schedule a bike tune-up, go rock climbing, get a professional ski or snowboard boot fitting, build a bike, or get racks installed on to cars. 
    • Dick’s Sporting Goods has also incorporated experiential shopping into their core stores too. For instance, the company has golf simulators and batting cages in store for customers who want to test baseball or golf gear. 
    • These experiences aim to strengthen the Dick’s Sporting Goods relationship to their customers and provide services beyond their traditional store product offerings. It also incentivizes customers to want to come into a physical store of Dick’s Sporting Goods, instead of purchasing gear digitally. 
  • Competitors are Exiting the Market
    • Several direct competitors of Dick’s Sporting Goods have closed, such as Bob’s Stores, Moosejaw, Next Adventure, and selected Eastern Mountain Sports locations. Less competitors means that Dick’s Sporting Goods could see changes in customer traffic patterns as they gain new customers, potentially helping them grow even more. Dick’s Sporting Goods has an opportunity at capturing higher market share and increasing pricing power. 
  • Growing Relationship with Key Suppliers
    • Dick’s Sporting Goods has solid, long-term relationships with Nike, New Balance, Under Armour, and Adidas. These suppliers are an important business asset because it helps the company have a competitive edge. Having strong, long-term relationships can translate into better wholesale pricing, improving profitability. It also is good to ensure inventory is consistent, which is an important factor in customer satisfaction.  

Weaknesses:

  • Acquisition Causes Future Profits to Fall Below Market Expectations
    • In Dick’s Sporting Goods 2024 Q4 report, the company disclosed that its net income was $238.3 million with $1.41 per share. This is a 57% decline from its net income of $299.97 million with $3.62 per share in 2024. The company attributed its declining profits to the Foot Locker acquisition, noting that it is incurring significant costs to get rid of stale inventory and close underperforming stores gained in the acquisition. Therefore, the company declared that it is expecting fiscal 2026 adjusted earnings per share to be between $13.50 and $14.50, a weaker expectation than the $14.67 analysts predicted.
  • Dependence on Other Brands for Inventory
    • Dick’s Sporting Goods relies on other brands such as Nike, New Balance, Puma, and Adidas for its range of products. While Dick’s Sporting Goods has established good relationships with these brands, depending on them can cause problems. If brands decide to change their distribution or have operational problems, Dick’s could struggle to have a strong inventory and stay competitive.
  • High Operational Costs
    • Dick’s Sporting Goods extensive physical presence alongside its omni-channel operations generates significant selling, general, and administrative expenses. These costs are imperative in staying competitive in the market, but the costs could also affect the profitability of the company and strain resources.

Opportunities:

  • Blind Box Boom
    • The “Blind Box Boom,” refers to the growing trend of selling products in sealed packaging where the contents are unknown, creating surprise, excitement, and collectibility. These blind boxes have been popular especially among Gen Z who often share their blind box unboxing experiences on social media, creating videos that generate tons of hype and drive the product’s demand. This occurred with blind boxes for toys such as Labubus and Sonny Angels. Ultimately, Dick’s Sporting Goods could tap into this trend and expand it from toys into the fashion and sneaker space. This would help the company gain more relevance among Gen Z and have an increase in UGC content. 
  • Growth of Gen Z Sneaker Culture
    • Sneakers are not just footwear to Gen Z. It is an expression of status, who they are, and what they like. According to a Brandwatch 2025 Generational Trends Report, on average, Gen Z talks about shoes 69,000 times per month, with sneakers consistently emerging as a key topic of conversation. This is because sneakers are one of the generation’s most popular and high demand products. Dick’s Sporting Goods should take this into account and continue to create Foot Locker campaigns targeted specifically at Gen Z, as this audience will highly resonate with the fashion-forward sneaker culture. By doing so, Dick’s repositions its brand from a focus on sports performance to one that also embraces style, lifestyle, and hype. 
  • Rise of Brand Activations
    • Many brands are increasingly using immersive activations to drive customer engagement. These events create memorable moments for people that can be more powerful than a traditional ad message. These moments can further be shared on social media, generating buzz and increasing brand awareness. Dick’s Sporting Goods, a brand already known for its immersive and experiential retail approach, should explore doing more innovative brand activations. Since the company already moves beyond traditional retail formats, developing activations would be a natural extension of its brand identity. 

Threats:

  • Intense Competition from E-Commerce Giants
    • E-commerce giants, Walmart and Amazon, provide lower-priced alternatives for certain sporting goods categories. These companies sacrifice margin for volume for discounted pricing, which in return makes it hard for Dick’s Sporting Goods to have strong pricing power. Customers then may choose to not shop at Dick’s Sporting Goods if they are prioritizing what product will be the cheapest to afford. 
  • Tariffs on Imports Affect Pricing of Goods
    • Under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, President Trump has announced a 10% tariff that could potentially be raised to 15%. These tariffs can negatively affect Dick’s Sporting Goods as they will have to pay higher costs, which then get paid by customers by pricing the products higher. In addition, tariffs can lead to supply chain adjustments, if a company wants to use different suppliers or switch to domestic production. If goods cannot be produced at a reasonable price, then the product’s availability can be affected. Whether it is product shortages or higher prices, these outcomes are hurting customer satisfaction and overall sales of the business
  • Geopolitical Tensions in the Middle East Impact Discretionary Spending
    • Crude prices in the United States have jumped 50%, the highest it has been in three years, because of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. As a result, higher oil and gas prices pose a threat to weaken discretionary spending budgets of consumers, which could affect overall Dick’s Sporting Goods sales. 

Strategic Insights: Dick’s Sporting Goods

Strategic Initiative: Dick’s Sporting Goods can lean further into experiential retail events by hosting activations tied to Foot Locker sneaker drops.

Rationale: Based on the rise of brand activations, Dick’s should rethink immersive experiences. While the company has created experiential retail stores, such as House of Sports and Public Lands, they should broaden it to be events too. These activations events should celebrate Foot Locker sneaker collection drops at various locations domestically and internationally. By not being limited to just immersive physical stores, Dick’s can make it more accessible for customers to partake in an immersive retail experience. People who maybe could not travel to the closest House of Sports or Public Lands stores can perhaps attend these events instead. Additionally, these events will lead to an increase in relevance and create social media buzz.

Success Metrics (KPIs):

  • After hosting ten experiential retail events, Dick’s Sporting Goods will have three million views on user-generated content for its pop-ups and activations. 
  • A year after hosting the first immersive activation, Dick’s Sporting Goods will have two million dollars in earned media value.
  • Six months after hosting the first immersive activation, Dick’s Sporting Goods will have gained 50,000 followers on its Instagram account.

Strategic Initiative: Dick’s Sporting Goods should use blind boxes as a way to connect to international customers

Rationale: Before Dick’s Sporting Goods acquired Foot Locker, the company had a limited international presence. However, after the acquisition, Dick’s obtained 2,400 Foot Locker stores in 20 countries. This means that now is a pivotal time for Dick’s Sporting Goods to establish themselves as a brand internationally. A unique way to do this could be through creating blind boxes for certain clothing attire such as shoes or hoodies or sports gear like baseball gloves. Overall, blind boxes are huge in Asian markets and also already appealed to consumers globally. With these blind boxes, social media buzz will be generated and as a result, Dick’s Sporting Goods will enhance its global relevance. 

Success Metrics (KPIs):

  • After six months of releasing blind boxes, Dick’s Sporting Goods will have one million views of customers unboxing their blind boxes across user-generated content. 
  • A year after releasing blind boxes, Dick’s Sporting Goods will have 10,000 new international TikTok followers on its account and 30,000 new international Instagram followers.

Strategic Initiative: Dick’s Sporting Goods should create exclusive sneakers with key suppliers. 

Rationale: As established in the strength section of the SWOT Analysis, Dick’s Sporting Goods has a strong, long-term relationship with brands such as Nike and Adidas. These are two leading when considering sneaker culture. Dick’s should leverage its connections to try and create exclusive shoes that are sold in limited quantities only through Foot Locker. By creating with these brands, it would appeal to Gen Z customers and give Dick’s Sporting Goods more credibility in sneaker culture. It also would differentiate Dick’s Sporting Goods from its competitors and show that it is not a traditional retail store. 

Success Metrics (KPIs):

  • After four months of selling these exclusive shoes, Dick’s Sporting Goods will have 400 new customer reviews from sneakerheads that are positive and rated the exclusive shoes four stars or higher on Foot Locker website. 
  • One month after the first drop of the exclusive shoes, Foot Locker website traffic will be up by 40%.