The customer-facing mobile app for Dick’s Sporting Goods has come a long way since its debut in 2021. Initially focused on providing an easy way for athletes (Dick’s name for its customers) to learn more about products via an in-store barcode scanning feature, the app has continued to incorporate new features that remove friction from the checkout process, such as like autocomplete address suggestions.
One of the first additions was a geolocation software development kit (SDK) from Radar, to answer the question of whether athletes were actually opening the app while shopping in the store. After its introduction, “Even with zero marketing, we were seeing upwards of 20% of app openings happening in a physical location, so we saw the potential of adding a ‘store mode,’” said Matt Walker, Director of Product and Design, Mobile Apps at Dick’s Sporting Goods. Walker had a fireside chat with Radar CEO Nick Patrick at the NRF 2025 session, The Future of Geolocation in Retail.
In 2023, the retailer started using the app to help manage one of the industry’s biggest grey market challenges: the sneaker craze. With certain brands and styles, “the demand for a pair of shoes far outweighs the available inventory,” and when these styles drop, there’s often a rush by resellers to buy up multiple quantities for resale, according to Walker.
“It’s important for us to do everything in our power to get those shoes,” to customers, he added. Dick’s created an app-only offering that allows customers to reserve the kicks they’re interested in, and then Dick’s randomly picks winners. These customers receive an alert that they can either get the shoes shipped to them or pick them up in a brick-and-mortar store. To help ensure that everything is on the up and up with these store purchases, Dick’s restricts pickups to a 100-mile radius of the store, which the retailer enforces with the help of the mobile app’s fraud detection tools.
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“Each time [an app user] enters a store, we’re sending another ‘event’ to Radar,” explained Walker. “We would want to know if that person’s location was being spoofed, for example. If they ‘enter’ a store in New York City and then ‘enter’ another one in Pittsburgh 30 minutes later, we’ll keep those people out to ensure the shoes are getting into the hands of real people, and the right people.”
Removing Friction from the Funnel
Even before establishing these security and merchandising use cases, Dick’s had been using Radar functionalities in the app to help boost conversions. Address line fill-ins and auto-suggestions — Radar’s first non-geolocation offering — was a “no-brainer,” said Walker. “It’s surfacing USPS-validated addresses, so there’s been a decrease in errors and increased conversion,” since it has been implemented.
The app’s store mode also has “become a great save-the-sale tactic,” said Walker. “If you purchase something in the store [using the in-store version of the app], we’ll ship it to you for free. If it’s not available in the size or color that you want, you can arrange to have it shipped to you.”
The app’s store mode also gives Dick’s multiple opportunities for location-based personalization. “We have more than 800 stores all over the country, so in some places the temperature is three degrees and in other places it’s 100 degrees, so we can target messaging based on the weather. We can also identify [products related to] local sports teams as another layer of getting that one-to-one messaging to you,” said Walker.
“It all comes back to one-to-one personalization, and geolocation is just one aspect that will allow us to personalize the experience for you,” he added. “I’m excited about what we can do using the app in our physical stores. We’ve been building House of Sport stores recently, a new concept for us. Being able to take the app, walk into a store and have something come to life, whether that’s personalized offers, wayfinding or surprise-and-delight moments — that’s where we’re heading. Of course, commerce will always be our backbone with the app, because of the amount of data we get from it. Mobile apps are unique, because people willingly give us information that they wouldn’t otherwise, including their location and allowing notifications.”
For Radar’s Patrick, he’s looking at just this type of micro-geolocation for application within a store’s boundaries. “Dick’s stores are big, so I can see wayfinding and assistance requests,” as possible functionalities, he said. “Additionally, we’ll be looking to use AI to engage with people not just at the right time but at the right place. That will help break through the noise.”