retail sales associate

outfitter

floor supervisor

community outreach manager

greeter

Fleet Feet

Unlike most jobs on the market, Fleet Feet Richmond is a place where individuals from all different backgrounds get to work together and create an awesome experience for customers who are looking for the right athletic shoes.  You do not have to be a present or past runner to work there, however, it does help in understanding shoes.  This is a great job for the person who is outgoing, committed to excellence, and loves a great team atmosphere.  I truly believe the best part about this job is the people you get to work with.  The team members are super friendly and welcoming, and everyone is a team player.  The second best part is working with customers to find the proper fit and shoe, which Fleet Feet trains you to do.  It is a longer process of training, yet once you pass the final review you will feel completely confident to help customers out.  It is truly a humbling experience to have people come in who trust you with their feet and look for your guidance in understanding what is going to be the best product for them.  Watching customers leave excited, educated, and eager to get going in whatever they might choose to do with the shoes is truly a wonderful feeling.  If you enjoy helping others and are selfless and love going the extra mile, this is the place for you.  There are great opportunities to earn bonuses and there are tons of free gear and sample gear that the company gives their workers to try out.  The owners, Jeff and Jason, are super friendly and outgoing, and are encouraging to everyone.  Their goal is to help you feel confident and comfortable out on the floor helping and serving others.  It is just like being coached on a sports team, there is constructive criticism, but it is not done out of spite, but done because they want to watch you succeed.  If one team member succeeds, we all succeed.  I truly look forward to coming to work every day because no day is the same as before.  There are new puzzles, new challenges and yes, new feet to work with.  It is a fun work environment, and truly interesting to understand the world of footwear which is an enormous business environment.  I strongly encourage the former team athlete and positive go-getter to apply to this job, as it is a great business to enter into and understand for a first real world job.  The owners also trust their employees, and allow for them to make their own choices and find their groove or style for fits, while following guidelines that are proven to work in sales.

I was the Marketing Director at Fleet Feet Sports Annapolis and Severna Park from July 2014-June 2015 and I learned an incredible amount in that year. Each day was very different, and always productive. The majority of my days were consumed with event planning for in and out of store events including fun runs/walks, races, lectures, and community events. I was responsible for securing vendors, community outreach, and marketing for our events. The marketing for the events included creating social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest) accounts, maintaining our website, sending newsletters, targeted emails, and inshore signage. My marketing duties also required me to highlight new products and be up to date on all things running and fitness.

My co-workers were awesome. Each one brought something different to the table and we worked great as a team. I learned quickly that if I were to manage two stores successfully, I had to rely on my co-workers a lot follow through with a lot of our initiatives (ex. promoting sales, training programs, fun runs that we were having through word of mouth to our customers). 

I would say one of the hardest parts of my job was balancing time "on" and "off" the floor. As a small business we didn't have a large number of staff so I was still responsible for being on the floor with customers throughout the day. Fleet Feet has a very thorough "FIT" process that we take our customers through, so each interaction was time consuming. This made it especially important for me to capitalize on my time off the floor to focus my efforts entirely on marketing, community outreach, and event planning. 

My absolute favorite part of the job was going hosting events. We hosted several in-store events throughout the year and I was responsible for everything from securing permits, finding sponsors, inviting guests, making a route, and having refreshments for runners and volunteers. 

Our customers made the entire job worthwhile because what we did was so rewarding. I loved working with customers to outfit them in the proper shoes, apparel, injury prevention gear, etc. and to see them succeed in their fitness goals was awesome.

This place is the Mcdonalds of shoe and athletic style shops. Turnover is high because it is very hard to find a manager with the experience to care for a team. Low level leadership holds you and the team to really low performance and development standards. Even if you learn fast and perform well, there is no appreciation or credit, and definitely no raise potential. The good staff are paid the same as the bad staff, employees dont matter enough for anyone to even look at the performance numbers.

Its a job, but not a place you want to spend much time and effort, you will develop stronger as a person almost anywhere else. Everyone is looking for a new job within 4 months of being there as soon as they find out theyre being paid at the bottom of the local labor market and the company strategy is to lay off 1/3rd of the staff, every single winter year after year. The corporate owned half of the company operates with a bigtime profits over people strategy. 

Nobody seems to care about the many data sets the company collects. This isnt a performance minded company, if you perform well or perform at the bottom, there is no team understanding or effort towards analysis because it doesnt matter if you leave. 
Great voice of the customer reviews near the highest in the company? Nobody cares.
One of the highest growth trajectories in the company while others are seeing negative growth?
Nobody cares.
Outstanding service and performance metrics?
Nobody cares.

The company is a big believer if someone is average at selling shoes, they're a great candidate for leading and management material. The range of managers isnt toxic, they're just completely lost, and that philosophy hurts all involved. Eventually many are quietly laid off by lowering their hours to the point where you cant afford to work for them anymore, profit over people. The good ones dont last here, and the bad ones stick around and get promoted to the point of incompetence.

Theres a lot of inequality behind the scenes that outfitters dont see, and even more wasted money on low caliber overhead.

I really enjoyed working here for the first few weeks. However, that all quickly changed. The owners seem to get a powertrip off of running a midsize running shoe store. This is shown by exerting their authority in aggressive and unnecessary ways. They make fun of employees right in front of their coworkers and constantly make people earn their approval. I loved the employees and brands that we got to work with, but the owners made life both inside and outside of work pure torture. There is no room for critique or growth, despite what they say. They are not interested in being a "family", no matter how much they harp on that idea. You never know when the older owner will explode and berate his employees, stooping as low as to threaten to stop stocking toilet paper in the store bathroom, just because a roll was not replaced in a timely fashion. To make things worse, these tirades were often directed at random employees, rather than the ones at "fault". This is a running shoe store, so it should be enjoyable for customers and employees alike. Instead, employees are harangued for only selling shoes to a customer, rather than forcing them to buy shoes, socks, insoles, apparel, and foam rollers all in one purchase. Our sales numbers were scrutinized so harshly that selling too much of one brand or not selling enough insoles would be treated like the end of the world by the owners. Overall, it was a stressful environment. If I were you, I would take your college degree and head somewhere that will pay you more than 20k a year.

What was fun about working at FLEET SPORTS from  1980-1999? Whatever it was the impact can still be felt some thirty years later
as I cannot attend ANY function without being recognized as THE FLEET FEET GUY.  
I was literally there at the start of the running boom and have seen the fitness revolution, from running to aerobics to the Iron Man, to Pilates and now Zumba. 
I recallwhen Shoes were less than $40 and never had air in them. 
Want some Old School Customer Service to go with your new fangled technology?
I knew nothing about sales other than what I was unconsciously doing. Imagine my surprise when I learned a person existed that actually taught you how to sell?!?!?  Better yet he made $1,500 an hour teaching you how! 
there nothing like lacing up a fresh pair of shoes and tking them on their first run.

I can also teach how to close a sale by suggesting an add on or when to shut up and read buying signals and just walk them to the front and ring it up. 
I'm fun, I'm a motivator, I'm relatable and I get the job done
Overqualified? YES Can hiring me save you from having to hire two or three part timers..Absolutely!
 I implemented  Vendor of the month where we got SPIFF's like free shoes, apparel or cash rewards from our Vendors 
I love being a wear tester for all the major brands and having a say in the development and re-design of footwear. 
One of my best memories was winning two tickets to see Jimmy Buffett in Las Vegas after I won a sales contest from Reebok

What is the best part of working at the company?
The best part was the simplicity of operating the store. It wasn't much to it, keeping it clean was very straightforward.
There's usually drinks at the end of the day too.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The most stressful part was being in a environment that wasn't diverse, and that reflected in the people working there. As a person of color I did not thrive in that environment and left because of that. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Everyone's going to have a different experience working there, I would say it's like a young, vibrant, energetic environment because it's athletic. It's about running and being on the move. It's pretty inconsistent because of how people walk in and out of stores, so sometimes you're really busy. Other times you're just standing around looking at shoes. I don't know if I could describe a culture there.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
A typical day is clocking in, put your things away, put your name tag on and hit the floor to see if anyone needs help with shopping. Or you may be assigned to stocking shelves, cleaning, making sure you review any information about sales, we often had charities and had to be aware of that, and upcoming running events in the city. You often had to make sure you found things to do to maintain the time. They very seldomly let you go home early when there wasn't enough to do. At the end of the day there's a full store clean up, and once everything is done everyone gets to go home.

It is important to note that Fleet Feet is a franchise, so every location is independently owned and operated. What you will find at one Fleet Feet in terms of culture is vastly different from others, etc. My commentary is specific to the location that I worked at. I worked both full time and part-time throughout a 2 year time frame while in school. I will say as part time jobs go, Fleet Feet offers a lot of flexibility (just work weekends, every other weekend, etc), but the pay for the work you are doing gets old really fast. Starting out, the rate (13/hr) seems fair, but over time as you as the employee become responsible for more and more (inventory, ordering, customer management), not to mention the days where it is so busy you don't even have time to eat, 13 dollars an hour is simply not enough. No raises. Shifts are typically 10-7pm. Long. From a student standpoint, I am envious of friends who get paid more per hour and have time to do school work while at their job. That is simply never an option at Fleet Feet. I adore several of my co-workers, while others not so much (as with any work place). Generally, this is a great part time job - the perks (free races, free shoes, discounts on gear, etc) are great if you are an active person, but if you are wanting a full time job that offers a good work/life balance, I would advise you to look elsewhere.

Fleet Feet is generally not a bad place to work in.  I previously worked in their Running Logistics wing and in general the job was low-stress and relaxed.  As long as you did you work (which was not hard, just tedious) it was not a bad full-time or part-time gig.  Pay is mediocre, but the full-time benefits are really good comparatively in the industry.  It was a little disheartening to see Fleet Feet invest in new technology for the logistics teams, whilst skimping on pay raises.  I left as they were implementing robots so I am not sure if they ended up laying everyone off (case study by a contracted company suggested they did though).

However, most of the better parts of the company were in the corporate office, as some of the logistics department had a foot in the door.  Advancement  and training opportunities are available, but you have to definitely show you want it or they will not consider it, even if you demonstrate the aptitude.  Management is hit or miss:  the good ones are supportive, but can be little bit too unserious at times when you need them to not be.  The bad ones are just out of touch with the teams they're supposed to lead.

Overall not a bad company to work for.  If you're in Running Logistics or the Retail locations, try to advance into the Corporate support team, as they get the most perks and better treatment and respect.  Otherwise, even if you stay, it's not a bad transitional gig while you're looking for other work because it's very relaxed.

Going in it is not your typical shoe store, you are taught a lot about feet, biomechanics and how to help runners and people in pain. I enjoyed all the knowledge I gained but after my first year or so it got quite tiring and hard to balance with my life. Most of the customers have become non runners. Also getting bonuses and raises is all based on hitting certain metrics so there is no guarantee you will hit either. It is a great job for anyone in high school or looking to work part time, but as full time it can be a lot. The schedule isn’t consistent either so it’s hard to do things outside of work. It’s a job with high turnover so in my time there were multiple managers and lots of coworkers coming and going. Pay is also not as competitive as a lot of other places. I would say pay does not align with how much knowledge and work is in the job. But if you do enjoy running or athletics it’s a great job to do in high school or college to make some money. It is a high stress environment that is fast paced. I will always appreciate what I learned but within the last while it hasn’t quite been the same. Also as a full time employee I was supposed to be offered benefits and they were never mentioned either. So it all was a bit chaotic.

My typical day at work would be coming into the store setting my things downstairs and clocking in. I would be on my feet all day, of course with 30 minute breaks. i would greet people and ask what brought them in. i would fit people, analyze they gate and how they walk. i would put them in the right shoe for them. I would offer knowledge about exercises they could do to strengthen a part or parts of their body. i could talk about nutrition and hydration which is an important thing for runners. I learned a lot about ho to talk to people and really listen to them and then solve that problem or pain they were having. The management was amazing. they did one on one training with us so we could know how the shoes differed from the other. my co-workers were the best. if i had a question about something they were always there to help and answer. I think the hardest part about working at fleet feet was when i couldn't find them a shoe or they weren't sure how a shoe would change their life. but sometimes you get those people. The most enjoyable part were actually the weekends, even though they were hectic. We had training groups and seeing them come in and wanting to learn more, being able to help them and answer their questions was the best thing about the job. I knew what I was talking about and how to answer.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Retail sales associate 161 salaries reported	$16.82 per hour
Outfitter 28 salaries reported	$16.91 per hour
Floor supervisor 3 salaries reported	$13.25 per hour
Community outreach manager 29 salaries reported	$19.55 per hour
Greeter 6 salaries reported	$10.08 per hour

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