Or, to take the story back even further, it begins at 11 McNamara Avenue, across the Susquehanna on Binghamton’s South Side, where my father was born on July 17, 1928. And it is in those rivers and on Court Street, in Binghamton’s East Side neighborhood, that the Dick’s story begins. The principal east-west street through town, US 11, is called Main Street west of the Chenango, and Court Street in downtown and the middle-class neighborhood of small shops and modest homes to the east. Binghamton is nestled on bottomland at the confluence of two rivers-the Susquehanna, which crosses the town from west to east and is already fat with the outflow of upstream tributaries, and the smaller Chenango, which joins the Susquehanna from the north.ĭowntown is tucked into the northeast crook of this confluence and is linked to neighborhoods to the west and south by a half-dozen bridges. We’ll set out on this journey where he did, and where I did twenty-six years later: in Binghamton, New York, a town that occupies a narrow valley in the state’s “Southern Tier,” the long stretch of rolling countryside that runs along the Pennsylvania border, north and west of New York City. Much of the culture we’ve built at the company that bears his name can be traced back through the years to the examples set by my mercurial, hard-living, often exasperating father. Many were indelible and continue to color the way we do business today, more than seventy years after he opened his first store. He was a child of the Depression with his share of demons, and his days were not always easy or pleasant, for him or anyone close by.Īll that said, Dick Stack left imprints on me, his oldest son, and on the company he founded. So, to be straight with you, right from the start: there’s plenty of Horatio Alger to the story you’re about to read, several episodes of rags-to-riches heroism, but the first protagonist of this tale was no saint. He drank too much, smoked too much, didn’t eat well or exercise, and his habits turned him old before his time. He wasn’t a particularly happy guy-he was driven more by a fear of failure than a desire to succeed, and he could be a humorless tyrant at work and home. He stood five-eight and never topped 150 pounds, but he was a brawler, unafraid to use his fists to make a point. He did right by his hometown.īut he was a complicated man. He defined customer service broadly: he believed that a business owed a debt to its community, and he made good on that debt in a number of ways. When I played baseball and football as a kid, he never missed a game. He was an athlete in his youth and remained passionate about sports throughout his life. He was a good, if conservative, businessman. Richard John Stack: where to begin, explaining my father? He was a born salesman with the gift of blarney, a guy who could chat up pretty much anyone. ExcerptĬhapter 1: “Go Start This” CHAPTER 1 “GO START THIS” Stack’s corporate biography is deeply personal… surprising openness interesting and humorous anecdotes” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). With vital lessons for anyone running a business and eye-opening reflections about what a company owes the people it serves, It’s How We Play the Game is “a compelling narrative…In a genre that can frequently be staid, Mr. But DICK’s support for embattled youth sports programs earned the stores surprising loyalty, and the company won even more attention when, in the wake of yet another school shooting-at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida-it chose to become the first major retailer to pull all semi-automatic weapons from its shelves, raise the age of gun purchase to twenty-one, and, most strikingly, destroy the assault-style-type rifles then in its inventory. The transformation Ed wrought wasn’t easy: economic headwinds nearly toppled the chain twice. Ed Stack bought the business from his father in 1984, and grew it into the largest sporting goods retailer in the country, with 800 locations and close to $9 billion in sales. In 1948, Ed Stack’s father started Dick’s Bait and Tackle in Binghamton, New York. It’s How We Play the Game tells the story of a complicated founder and an ambitious son-one who transformed a business by making it about more than business, conceiving it as a force for good in the communities it serves. Porchlight’s Best Leadership & Strategy Book of The YearĪn inspiring memoir from the CEO of DICK’s Sporting Goods that is “not only entertaining but will be of great value to any entrepreneur” (Phil Knight, New York Times bestselling author of Shoe Dog), this book shows how a trailblazing business was created by giving back to the community and by taking principled, and sometimes controversial, stands-including against the type of weapons that are too often used in mass shootings and other tragedies.
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