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Dick's Sporting Goods: #3 in the App Store

Behind ChatGPT and Claude. Ahead of every other retailer on earth right now.

Not because they built a chatbot. Because they built something people actually open every day. Their "Move" integration rewards physical activity with gear discounts — which means Dick's has found the rarest thing in retail: a legitimate reason to be on your home screen that has nothing to do with a purchase.

This is the loyalty program done right. The app earns its place in the customer's life before asking for the wallet. What does that tell you about every retailer who led with "AI features" this year?

Nike's Redemption Tour

Elliot Hill is getting the Phil Knight treatment in the press. Inflatable jackets. Robotics-powered shoes. A media blitz that would make any comms team proud.

Here is the question that matters: Is any of this landing with the person buying a pair of Pegasus?

Nike's NPS scores have been declining for three years. The innovation narrative is real — the product quality narrative is not yet settled. Wall Street responds to platforms. Consumers respond to products. Right now, Nike is doing an excellent job of convincing investors they have a plan. The harder job is convincing a runner who switched to Hoka that it's time to come back.

Those are not the same job.

The Shrinking Pie

Total retail share of consumer spending is down 9% over the last three years. Housing. Healthcare. Groceries. The discretionary dollar is getting squeezed from every direction, and the two companies best positioned to absorb that pressure are the two you'd expect.

Amazon owns the "want." Electronics, hobbies, and the random 11pm purchase — it goes through Seattle. Walmart owns the "need." Groceries and essentials are theirs. The problem for Walmart is that high-margin discretionary spending remains stubbornly difficult to crack. The problem for everyone else is that there are only two places left to stand.

If you are not Amazon and you are not Walmart, "broad assortment, competitive price" is not a strategy. It is a description of your eventual margin problem.

Own something specific. Or get squeezed out by the giants who own everything else.

Last week, the App Store said something retail strategists should tattoo on their forearms.

Claude was number one. ChatGPT was number two. And sitting at number three — above Google's Gemini — was Dick's Sporting Goods.

Not a new AI platform. Not a startup burning venture capital. Dick's. The one in the strip mall with the batting cages and the wall of sneakers.

What happened?

Dick's has a feature inside their app called MOVE. Sync your fitness tracker. Hit 10,000 steps, walk three miles, or log 30 minutes of activity. You earn three ScoreCard points. Redeem those points for discounts. One user described it as "basically getting free money for being active."

That's it. That's the whole feature.

No generative AI. No large language model. No billion-dollar infrastructure bet. A point for a walk. And it drove a brick-and-mortar sporting goods retailer to the top three of the App Store alongside the most hyped technology in a generation. (More than a generation?)

So the question every retailer needs to answer right now is not "should we build an AI feature?" The question is: what job are your customers actually asking you to solve?

Dick's customers are athletes. They move. They train. They track their steps. Dick's didn't invent a new behavior — they inserted themselves into one that already existed. Every day that a customer hits their step goal, Dick's gets a touchpoint. The app isn't a shopping cart with a loyalty badge bolted on. It's a fitness companion that sells sporting goods on the side.

The hidden message is simple: frequency.

Frequency is the most underrated metric in retail. You can have the best product assortment in the market and still lose if your competitor shows up in your customer's life more often than you do.

Dick's app has 221,000 ratings at 4.8 stars. Foot traffic grew 1.2% same-store. That's not coincidence. Daily activity rewards create daily app opens. Daily app opens create purchase intent. Purchase intent converts in 850 stores and online.

The math works because the job-to-be-done is right.

Stop thinking about the immediate transaction. Get the app in your customer's pocket before the purchase is even relevant. By the time they need new shoes, a new fitness tracker, or gear for their kid's rec league — Dick's is already there. Every single day. The AI players are building tools to help people think. Dick's built a tool to reward how their customers already live.