Road Runner Sports drills deep into its customer files to provide rewarding direct marketing

By Melissa Sepos

But you really only have one person to consult—Mike Gotfredson. He is the founder and CEO of Road Runner Sports, the world’s largest running store, catalog and online business—and an avid runner.

Gotfredson began Road Runner Sports in 1983. He had a wife, four children, no job and needed a new pair of running shoes. He decided to start a running shoe mail-order business after dropping an exorbitant 30 bucks on a new pair of Brooks running shoes and taking a six-city tour to investigate the running shoe market.