Dick's Sporting Goods, the largest U.S. retailer of its kind, has opened its biggest distribution center, a facility that embraces automation — but without robots — as sports merchandise sellers compete to be the fastest to get items to consumers.
The more than 800,000-square-foot facility at 10001 Old Burleson Road on about 90 acres in Fort Worth, Texas, can expand up to more than 1 million square feet, the equivalent of 18 football fields. It's expected to ship products to over 200 retail stores in several states and eventually directly to consumers who shop online, said Sean Whitehouse, Dick's senior vice president of supply chain.
Dick's, based near Pittsburgh in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, has more than 850 U.S. stores and the new distribution center provides a glimpse of the support systems required for national retailers to keep goods flowing to various locations.
The retailer expects products including cleats, lacrosse sticks and basketball hoops to flow through its new warehouse with increasing speed in coming months, aided by automated conveyor belts across the ceiling and fed by most of the 150 employees, said Whitehouse. About 95% of the employees at the distribution hub will work with automation, including scanners for each box and forklifts that can extend more than 60 feet vertically for massive loads.
"Regardless of your job, whether you are in receiving or shipping or building pallets of boxes, you use some level of automation in your" role at the distribution center, Whitehouse told CoStar News. "We don't have many jobs anymore that don't tie into automation. So, you have to know how to work with that and we also teach people how to do that."
At this point, the company doesn't see the need to spend more for robots, a technology some advanced distribution centers around the country use to move and load packages.
"But you aren't going to see an automated storage retrieval system," he added. "You're not going to see robots. We haven't got to the point that says we need to really embrace robotics."
Whitehouse told employees at the facility's grand opening this week that their work is vital because competition is fierce.
Fierce competition
Dick's competes with Academy Sports + Outdoors, Big 5 Sporting Goods and Hibbett, alongside other specialized retailers like Scheels and Bass Pro Shops. Even online giant Amazon and retailers like Walmart and Target want to get in the action for sports merchandise. And sought-after brands, like Adidas and Nike, are upping their game by selling directly to customers.
Dick's founder Dick Stack launched the firm as a bait-and-tackle shop in Binghamton, New York, in 1948 and he and other leaders have grown it over the decades into a Fortune 500 company that is the largest omnichannel sporting goods retailer in the U.S., according to analysts who follow the company.
Dick's is on the cutting edge of getting goods into the hands of athletes and sports enthusiasts across the United States through its robust e-commerce platform as well as its experiential House of Sport locations that are bigger than its regular stores and allow customers to engage with merchandise and feature interactive sports activities.
In addition, the company acquired Foot Locker in a deal valued at $2.4 billion last year, giving Dick's a global portfolio with plans to close some of the sneaker retailer's stores as part of a turnaround effort.
Dick's expects its total sales for fiscal 2026 to be in the range of $14.5 billion to $14.7 billion, with comparable sales growth of 2% to 4% based on the continued strength of the Dick's business and the turnaround efforts underway at Foot Locker, Dick's Chief Financial Officer Navdeep Gupta said during the company's earnings call last month. Gupta said Dick's is expected to see a financial boost as the World Cup gets underway in North America in June.
That growth could lead to adding another 200,000 square feet to the newly opened Fort Worth distribution center to total more than 1 million square feet of space, Whitehouse said. Dick's expects to eventually have 300 employees at the distribution center.
"We're going to continue to grow just like our business" with growth centered on "bringing athletes the right product at the right time," Whitehouse said.
Significant region
The Texas facility is Dick's sixth U.S. distribution center and adds an important region to Dick's extended supply chain network, with other hubs in Smithton, Pennsylvania; Plainfield, Indiana; Atlanta; Goodyear, Arizona; and Conklin, New York.
The Texas facility is Dick's largest — by sheer size, even without the anticipated expansion — in its U.S. supply chain.
"We don't have a definitive timeline of mind as far as we're going to expand on this date, but we'll watch the business and then we'll go from there," Whitehouse told CoStar News.
Dick's pre-leased the distribution center in August 2024 as part of a build-to-suit deal with Dallas-based Hillwood. Hillwood recently sold its last plot of land south of downtown Fort Worth with Amazon and Continental Tires having already opened neighboring distribution hubs.
Hillwood Executive Vice President Bill Burton told CoStar News the development company would welcome an "opportunity to grow" if they could find additional land in the area.
Hillwood recently added to what it calls its "most ambitious" industrial speculative pipeline in the firm's history. The addition helps keep the AllianceTexas area in North Texas as one of the top markets for new industrial construction in the United States, according to CoStar data.
That pipeline has been a game changer for Hillwood with 3 million square feet on the ground in various stages of development to keep up with the ever-changing requirements of any company's supply chain, said Burton, who has 37 years in the business.
"The demand is high, but we don't want to be out of space," Burton added. "Every existing building we have is leased, so it's important for us to have available space across buildings of all sizes."