Dive Brief:

• Dick’s Sporting Goods has created what it’s calling the “All-American Sports Center” in Mobile, Alabama.

• The center features a Field & Stream store, Dick’s store for fishing, hunting, and outdoor gear, and a Dick’s Sporting Goods store, with separate entrances that are actually all under one roof.

• Dick’s has noted that web sales increase from zip codes in proximity to its stores, and has found success in treating its stores as warehouses for ship-from-store and other logistics solutions. 

Dive Insight:

Dick’s has made an all-out effort to embrace omnichannel retail, smoothing out its inventory so that shipping and returns are easily made across channels. The retailer hasn’t said whether this concept, combining locations of a Field & Stream store and a Dick’s, will spring up anywhere outside of Mobile. But it could be an experiment that proves worthwhile for other locations, at least in areas with enough demand for outdoor gear.

Dick’s has also had success with the “store-within-store” concept, and features outdoors-y “Lodge” branded items in some of its Dick’s locations. At the Mobile All-American Center, the Lodge disappears because Field & Stream is right there — it may make sense for Field & Stream stores-within-stores to occupy space in Dick’s instead.