Fleet Feet emphasizes the in-store experience as its sales associates spend an average of 42 minutes with each customer.
Going back to his college days at John Carroll University where he studied small business management, Frank DeJulius said he was drawn to the specialty retail business model and this idea of serving people “one foot at a time.” It’s fitting, then, that DeJulius went on to a career with Fleet Feet and now with wife Stacey owns seven locations of the running-focused retailer.
A runner and athlete himself, DeJulius began working in a Fleet Feet store in Cleveland while still in school. By 2010 and with his eye on eventually becoming a franchisee, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to gain experience operating a high-volume unit doing $2 million a year in sales. Joined by Stacey, then his girlfriend, a stint undertaking a turnaround effort at a store in Illinois followed before the couple headed home to Ohio in 2012 to take over operations of a company-owned Fleet Feet location in suburban Cincinnati.
At the time part of a fledgling program at the company designed to turn employees into future franchisees, the DeJuliuses became equity operators of the store in Blue Ash, Ohio, which they bought in 2018.
“Fleet Feet was a company of handshakes and hugs back then,” DeJulius said of the decision to relocate to Cincinnati with the aim—but no contractual guarantee—of purchasing the store from corporate. “We wanted to invest in ourselves. They followed through and we followed through.”
Three new stores followed, and, after a surviving a “rough” couple of coronavirus-impacted years that involved employee furloughs and rent abatements, “we are back to pre-pandemic numbers,” DeJulius said.
Following Fleet Feet’s acquisition in late 2021 of JackRabbit, a 56-unit system of running stores owned by CriticalPoint Capital, the DeJuliuses were confronted with an unexpected growth opportunity: to buy four of the JackRabbit locations in Cincinnati and convert them to Fleet Feet.
“We had some really honest conversations,” said DeJulius. “It was a negotiation and we had to think about if and how we could take on four more stores.”
After deciding to double their unit count in early 2022, “we had to dig in hard,” he continued, to integrate operations and ensure the people coming over to their company were the right fit. “We have higher performance metrics than JackRabbit did,” he said, and it took work to achieve alignment on culture and goals. They had to “delicately close” one of the acquired stores because it was near an existing Fleet Feet.
Franchisees Stacey and Frank DeJulius have seven Fleet Feet stores open in Ohio.
The couple’s seven stores are now doing $10 million in total sales. Success, said DeJulius, comes from embracing the experiential aspect of specialty retail. “You can’t try shoes on online and you can’t get the expertise we offer,” he said. Fleet Feet has a robust ecommerce business, he added, but the in-store experience generates the bulk of sales.
“We have a coffee shop in one of our stores,” he added, and another store is open on the campus of Fifty West Brewing, with which they run events such as the Drink N Dash Beer Mile.
Those in-store sales results mirror what Fleet Feet sees across its 275-unit system, said Chief Operating Officer Jason Jabaut, with 85 percent of sales coming from the brick-and-mortar locations and 15 percent via ecommerce. Fit experts, as Fleet Feet calls its sales associates, spend 42 minutes on average with each customer, he noted, and a “customer-obsessed culture” is ingrained in the model.
Franchisees focus on connecting with running groups in their communities, sponsoring and hosting races and also getting in front of corporate clients. Through the brand’s Workplace Fit program, owners will bring their 3D foot scanners to corporate customers and help outfit employees with shoes, insoles and socks.
Fleet Feet in recent years has made an intentional push to drive franchise development, said Jabaut, as it’s made investments in its technology stack, training and overall marketing. “We’re investing in improving brand awareness and in how we show up to customers and potential owners,” he said.
The company’s “#ReasonsWeRun” campaign in 2023 was its largest ever, with a mix of paid and organic content, an integrated media plan and store-specific assets. Collaborative campaigns with apparel and footwear brands are yielding positive results, and Fleet Feet’s efforts to broaden its customer base beyond marathoners and athletes are ongoing, Jabaut said.
For a company founded nearly 50 years ago, it seems Fleet Feet is just getting warmed up.