sporting-goods
(8)
Steve Lawrence and the second pair of shoes
Before he became Academy’s CEO, Steve Lawrence was a customer buying gear for his son. His task now is to keep the store useful as the people who shop there grow more ambitious.
Strick Walker Built a Career by Making Brands Mean Something
Across Patagonia, Spindrift, Merrell, Simms and now M72, Walker has kept returning to one useful question: does the brand's story match what the organization actually does?
Marc MacRae Built a Retail Career Like a Coach Builds a Team
Across four decades in sporting-goods retail, Marc MacRae has treated merchandising, mentoring and football coaching as versions of the same job: put people in the right position, then help them win.
Donna Finelli and the Local Advantage
After building brands Canadians encounter every day, Donna Finelli took on a harder brief: make a national sporting-goods network feel unmistakably local. Her answer begins with the people who sharpen the skates, fit the gear and know the town.
Jeff Dunn’s Merchandising Playbook: Go Narrow, Get Local, Stay Ready
After 25 years inside Walmart and Sam’s Club, Jeff Dunn arrived at Sportsman’s Warehouse with a deceptively simple brief: stock the gear that matters, in the places and seasons where it matters most.
Knut Eliassen
Knut Eliassen is a Norwegian-American snowboarder turned marketing executive who serves as Chief Marketing Officer at Nitro Snowboards. Born in Minneapolis to a Norwegian father and a Minnesotan mother, he won a USASA national boardercross title at 15, moved to Norway at 16, and rode professionally for Nitro while completing a business degree at Handelshoyskolen BI. He joined Nitro in 2005 as a rider and rep, became the brand's global team manager, and worked his way up through sports marketing, marketing director, and VP of global marketing roles before being named CMO in 2025. Based in Salt Lake City, he oversees brand, media, social, video, and team departments for Nitro and L1 Outerwear, has produced and appeared in snowboard films including Hyped!, Boom, The Bad Seeds, and the documentary 28 Winters, and hosts Nitro's ten-part Learn To Snowboard tutorial series. His stated goal is simple: get more people onto snowboards.
Tim Rumer
Tim Rumer is a sporting goods executive who serves as Senior Vice President of Business Development at Mizuno USA in Peachtree Corners, Georgia. A left-handed pitcher drafted by the New York Yankees out of Duke University in 1990, he spent eight professional seasons in the minors and reached Triple-A before trading the mound for the boardroom. At Mizuno he climbed from business unit manager to product and lifecycle leadership - including a stint running ball glove development - and now steers partnerships and growth across the company's team sports and golf divisions.
Dirk Buikema
Dirk Buikema is the founder and CEO of Hyperwear, an Austin-based functional fitness company he started in 2011. A former corporate attorney and semiconductor strategist turned inventor, he holds multiple US patents for training gear including the SandBell sandbag, the Hyper Vest adjustable weighted vest, and the SteelBell. Under his lean, research-driven, direct-to-consumer approach, Hyperwear grew 85% from 2022 to 2024 and landed on the 2025 Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest-growing private companies.