fun with dick and steve

I took an unexpected trip to SouthPark Saturday and got a chance to see one of the first Dick's Sportinng Goods opened since the merger with Galyan's. I went in with high expectations.

To put it lightly, I was not impressed.

The store was constructed to the Galyan's prototype and even had Galyan's signs on it until September, when Dick's intercepted it and modified the store to fit the current Dick's design. The end result was bastardized merger of two seeming similar, but so very diffferent chains. Many of the walls and much of the store signage was the upscale and elegant Galyan's style. But the displays are pure big-box Dick's. Not a good blend.

Don't get me wrong, I love Dick's Sporting Goods usually, especially their Greensboro and Short Pump stores. And I loved Galyan's at Stony Point Fashion Park the times I visited. In fact, I just posted a positive story on Dick's. The issue is that the two stores were two different in retail philosophy to be combined, and the end result was muddled and boring. The whole store had a 'dead' feeling, highly unusual in a mall packed with people on a Saturday afternoon.

Take for example the sneaker section. Galyan's tended to stock more and better kicks, while Dick's only stocked the really sweet stuff at their most upscale locations. Thinking a mall as nice as SouthPark would get the upmarket kicks, considering the circumstances, I was heavily disappointed to find a sub-par selection of shoes with multiples of the same sneaker on the walls to simulate variety.

And in some kind of last minute stroke of idiocy, hiking shoes and hunting boots were placed on a blue neon background meant for high performance sneakers. It wasn't even ironically cool; it was just wrong. Hunting boots at SouthPark? Come on, that's just wrong. You don't see Prada shoes at looking for a new store in Charlotte and SouthPark's history of kicking out unproductive retailers (Sears left in 2002 after 32 years when it was suffering from similar problems), things had better improve...and soon.

I don't want you to think I'm sounding the postmortem for Dick's stores everywhere. Just that one. A really bad one.