A fishing department can have too much merchandise and still disappoint a fisherman. The shelves look busy. The choice looks impressive. Then the customer asks for the particular thing needed for a particular stretch of water, and the answer is an apology. Paul Stone has spent much of his working life dealing with the distance between a store that appears well stocked and a store that actually works.
At Sportsman’s Warehouse, that distance has become his assignment. Stone arrived as president and chief executive on November 1, 2023, after a career that took him from Sam’s Club to Cabela’s to Hertz. The route sounds like a shopping trip interrupted by a rental-car reservation. Its continuity lies in the work: running places where a customer arrives expecting somebody to have thought through the details.
His early reset offers a useful introduction. In the fishing department, the company removed 40 percent of its stock-keeping units and 30 percent of its vendors, then rebuilt the assortment around regional needs and deeper supplies of key products. By mid-February 2024, the spring fishing presentation was ready. There is a certain retail comedy in making a shop more useful by offering fewer things. There is also a serious discipline behind it.
Twenty-eight years before the next move
Stone’s experience at Sam’s Club lasted 28 years. He began there as a store manager and rose to divisional senior vice president for the western United States. Eventually, his responsibilities extended to more than 200 locations and 30,000 employees. Sportsman’s Warehouse would later describe the business under his oversight as approximately $18 billion in profit-and-loss responsibility.
Those numbers describe the scale of the job, rather than a personal fortune or revenue he created single-handedly. They also explain the kind of executive he became. A divisional operator must turn a company’s intentions into something that survives different buildings, managers, staffing schedules and customers. A decision that sounds sensible at headquarters has to work on a Saturday, too.
A few quieter details sit alongside the corporate chronology: his education at West Virginia State University, Sam’s Club Market Manager of the Year recognition in 2001 and 2007, and service on the Denver chapter board of Boys and Girls Clubs of America from 2010 to August 2016. These are small windows into a career otherwise measured in operating roles.
In November 2015, Stone became Cabela’s chief retail officer. He stayed through December 2017. The move brought him into a business where customers might want an explanation as much as a product. Outdoor retail puts a particular demand on the person answering questions: the customer’s plans usually continue well beyond the checkout.
Getting knowledge to the person who needs it
At Cabela’s, Stone discussed a practical problem with employee expertise. The company called its store employees Outfitters, a name that came with an expectation. Customers wanted advice about activities such as hunting, fishing and boating. An employee’s uncertainty could quickly become the customer’s uncertainty about the whole visit.
Stone said the organization bore responsibility when Outfitters lacked knowledge. The phrase puts responsibility with the organization. It is an unusually useful sentence for a retail executive: brief enough to remember, and awkward to hide behind. Training becomes part of management’s obligation, rather than a private problem for the employee facing the question.
“When our Outfitters lack knowledge, that’s our miss.”
Paul Stone, discussing Cabela’s store operations, 2017
The tools Cabela’s used were concrete. Hands-free communications let employees direct questions toward buyers without travelling through several layers of management. Product videos helped put supplier information on employees’ mobile devices. Customer feedback recorded by smartphone could reach store managers. Technology had a fairly plain purpose here: shorten the journey between a question and a useful response.
Stone was also scheduled to discuss retail experience and digital connectivity at the Future Stores conference in Seattle in June 2017. The subject fits the work he described at Cabela’s. Online information and physical service were already meeting in the same shopping trip. The employee on the floor needed access to the knowledge elsewhere in the business.
The Hertz appointment with no gentle introduction
Stone joined Hertz in March 2018 to lead North American retail operations. At the time, that meant approximately 4,500 locations and 27,000 employees, alongside responsibilities that included car sales and the company’s transportation-network business. The goods had wheels, but the operational questions were familiar: how to organize people, simplify processes and deliver a dependable experience across many locations.
On May 18, 2020, Hertz named him president and chief executive, succeeding Kathryn Marinello. Four days later, on May 22, Hertz and certain subsidiaries filed for Chapter 11 protection. The interval is worth pausing over. A new chief executive ordinarily gets a little time to arrange the office. Stone’s opening week belongs in a rather different category.
Hertz emerged from Chapter 11 on June 30, 2021. The restructuring brought more than $5.9 billion in new equity capital and reduced corporate debt by nearly 80 percent. That outcome involved employees, creditors, investors, advisers and the court, as well as management. Stone’s tenure placed him inside a complicated collective effort to give the business a workable financial future.
In October 2021 he became president and chief operating officer. He remained in that role until September 2023, when Hertz announced his departure to pursue opportunities in retail. He stayed through October in a transitional capacity. The return to shops was explicit before his next employer announced his appointment.
His farewell to Hertz colleagues was warmer than the usual list of responsibilities. He thanked colleagues for their support and camaraderie, and said the team had overcome obstacles and managed to “GSD.” The initials supplied a small flash of shop-floor impatience amid the corporate courtesies. His emphasis was on the people with whom the work had been done.
A national retailer with local homework
Sportsman’s Warehouse announced Stone’s appointment on September 26, 2023. He succeeded interim chief executive Joseph Schneider and joined the board when his role took effect in November. The company’s brief included improving the customer experience, developing e-commerce and working on private-label products. His Cabela’s experience made the return to outdoor specialty retail a recognizable next step.
Stone described spending his first four months visiting stores and speaking with employees, customers and vendors. The listening had operational consequences. Alongside the fishing reset, he discussed technology needs and changes to the leadership team. His diagnosis centered on the fundamentals of merchandise and service, expressed in the company’s language of great gear and exceptional service.
The adjustment was uneven. By September 2024, he acknowledged that inventory had been run too low in the first half of the year, with insufficient depth in important products. The company planned an additional $20 million investment in new and core inventory for hunting. Reducing stock and having the right stock proved to be separate tasks. A spreadsheet can look wonderfully tidy while a customer leaves empty-handed.
His 2025 explanation became more geographically specific. He argued that the chain needed the buying power of a national business alongside the knowledge of a local shop. Alaska was his example of a market whose needs required greater merchandising autonomy. Store employees, with their community connections and practical experience, were central to the plan.
Three things have to meet.
- The placeMerchandise suited to the local market.
- The momentKey products ready for the season.
- The personAn Outfitter who can help the customer choose.
An editorial reading of Stone’s stated merchandising and service priorities.
One percent, with a qualification
For fiscal 2025, which ended January 31, 2026, Sportsman’s Warehouse reported a 1 percent increase in comparable-store sales. It was the company’s first positive annual result on that measure since 2020. Total sales were approximately $1.209 billion. For a leader trying to repair the existing business, that comparable-store figure was a meaningful marker.
The same year also produced a $50.1 million net loss, including $17.8 million in impairment charges tied to ten underperforming store locations. The figures belong together. Sales progress had arrived; a completed financial recovery had not. The company expected about five store closures after the 2026 holiday season and planned no new openings during fiscal 2026.
Sales growth and bottom-line profitability measure different parts of the recovery.
The September 1, 2026 update showed further movement, with second-quarter sales of $295.6 million and comparable-store sales flat. The quarterly net loss narrowed to $4.4 million from $7.1 million a year earlier. Inventory was $44.5 million lower year over year. Stone continued to emphasize assortment, availability and local relevance. The business was still asking him to demonstrate that these familiar retail priorities could produce durable results.
His ambition is easy to recognize in the sequence of jobs. At Cabela’s, information needed to reach the Outfitter. At Hertz, operations had to keep serving customers through a financial reconstruction. At Sportsman’s Warehouse, a national assortment has to make sense in an individual place. Stone’s career keeps returning to the employee who must make a large organization useful, one question at a time.
A customer asking about fishing gear is unlikely to be impressed by a diagram of the corporate structure. The test arrives at the counter, in ordinary language. Is the right thing here? Does somebody understand what it is for? After decades managing the machinery behind those answers, Stone is being judged by them again.