Academy Sports + Outdoors has continued to expand their geography. As part of their aggressive strategy to add stores, they’ve opened their first store in Ohio, the northernmost store in their portfolio.
Opening just in time for Father’s Day, the new Zanesville, OH location is about an hour east of Columbus. It marks the third new location this year on Academy’s path to open 15-17 stores in fiscal 2024.
Academy Sports + Outdoors is excited to join the Zanesville community and provide customers with a destination that makes pursuing their sports and outdoors passions easy and affordable just in time for summer. By expanding our footprint into Ohio, Academy is excited to help more active families have fun out there and become the new go-to destination for customers looking for the top brands and the lowest prices.
Eric Friederich, Senior Vice President of Retail Operations, Academy Sports + Outdoors
While the Academy is most known for sporting goods, they also are in the outdoor space. They’ve noted their success in outdoor cooking in the past, namely with Blackstone griddles.
While retailers like Dick’s Sporting Goods and Cabela’s are direct competitors of Academy, other grill retailers should take notice. With their expanding footprint and wide selection of popular grills from makers like Traeger, Weber, Masterbuilt, and Oklahoma Joe’s, they will continue to take market share.
Academy also recently launched a retailer exclusive pellet grill with Pit Boss that is one of the nicest grills that Pit Boss offers. Our fingers are crossed that one day they’ll bring offset smokers north, like the Pitts & Spitts Maverick, that they sell in Texas markets.