Porchlightâs Best Leadership & Strategy Book of The Year
An inspiring memoir from the CEO of DICKâs Sporting Goods that is ânot only entertaining but will be of great value to any entrepreneurâ (Phil Knight, New York Times bestselling author of Shoe Dog).
Itâs How We Play the Game shows how a trailblazing business was created by giving back to the community and by taking principled, and sometimes controversial, standsâincluding against the type of weapons that are too often used in mass shootings and other tragedies.
Ed Stackâs memoir tells the story of a complicated founder and an ambitious sonâone who transformed a business by making it about more than business, conceiving it as a force for good in the communities it serves.
In 1948, Ed Stackâs father started Dickâs Bait and Tackle in Binghamton, New York. 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. The transformation Ed wrought wasnât easy: economic headwinds nearly toppled the chain twice. But DICKâs 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 shootingâat Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Floridaâit 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.
With vital lessons for anyone running a business and eye-opening reflections about what a company owes the people it serves, Itâs How We Play the Game is âa compelling narrativeâŠIn a genre that can frequently be staid, Mr. Stackâs corporate biography is deeply personalâŠ[Features] surprising openness [and] interesting and humorous anecdotesâ (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).