Case Study: Road Runner Sports Keeping Pace

Selling shoes of any kind via mail order is not the easiest market. But running shoes is a niche industry all to itself. The average runner goes through three pairs of running shoes a year. At retail prices they would spend more than $300 annually on shoes. In retail or in mail order there is little guarantee that a shoe will perform well for a runner. Mail order is slightly riskier because customers can’t try on the shoe. And you can’t rely on the running shoe’s size, each style is sized differently, making it a $100 gamble.