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REI
REI, short for Recreational Equipment Inc., was founded in 1938 in Seattle by a group of mountain climbers, including Lloyd and Mary Anderson, who wanted better access to quality ice axes and climbing equipment than what was then commercially available in the United States. The company operates as a consumer cooperative rather than a traditional publicly traded corporation, meaning customers can become lifetime members for a small one-time fee and receive an annual dividend based on their purchases, a structure that has remained central to REI's identity since its founding. REI became well known for its "Opt Outside" campaign, launched in 2015, in which the company closes all of its stores on Black Friday and pays its employees to spend the day outdoors instead, a deliberate rejection of the retail industry's biggest shopping day that generated significant national media attention. REI's combination of its founding cooperative ownership structure and its widely publicized "Opt Outside" Black Friday closure campaign has made it one of the most distinctively positioned outdoor and sporting goods retailers in the country.
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Dick's Sporting Goods
Dick's Sporting Goods was founded in 1948 in Binghamton, New York by Richard "Dick" Stack, who reportedly started the business at age 18 with a small bait-and-tackle shop after his grandfather gave him $300 to start a business of his own. The company grew into the largest sporting goods retailer in the United States by revenue, expanding from its original fishing and hunting equipment focus into a full-line sporting goods chain covering team sports, fitness, footwear, and outdoor recreation equipment. Dick's drew significant national attention in 2018 when it voluntarily stopped selling assault-style rifles and raised the minimum age for gun purchases at its stores to 21 following the Parkland, Florida school shooting, a policy decision that drew both praise and criticism from different segments of its customer base. Dick's Sporting Goods's combination of its founder's origin story starting the business as a teenager and its high-profile 2018 firearms policy decision has made it one of the most closely watched sporting goods chains in the country.
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