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Product cover image for Fleet Feet Charleston: Finding the Next Stride

Fleet Feet Charleston: Finding the Next Stride

Kamyar Goudarzi, Hadi Shaheen, Carrie Blair Messal

Product #:W45965
Supplier:Ivey
Discipline:Entrepreneurship, Strategy
Setting:United States, 2025
Details:Case (PDF) • 12 pages • 2025-10-30

Subjects:

Growth strategyEntrepreneurshipStrategy

Industries:

Media, entertainment, and professional sports

Geography:

United StatesNorth America
Your Price:$9.71

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Fleet Feet Charleston, founded in 2013 by Chris and Amy Minkel, expanded from a single Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, store to four running-specialty shops. Guided by an employees-first, community-second, customers-third philosophy, it delivered expert gait analysis and local programs. Yet weekend wait times exceeded 30 minutes, lost-sale walk outs were rising, and high staff turnover threatened service consistency. Amid margin pressure from other outlets, including its suppliers and competition from triathlon shops, big box retailers, and online platforms, management had to choose a growth strategy between opening new locations, using digital tools, or deploying mobile fitting services without diluting the brand’s personalized experience.

Learning Objectives

Fleet Feet Charleston is, first and foremost, a strategic-management case. Because the narrative weaves together franchising, community-based retail, and technology adoption, it is also suitable for entrepreneurship courses that explore growth through build-versus-buy moves and how to create a competitive advantage as a small business. The founding story (wife-husband co-founders) and persistent staffing and succession challenges make the case a natural addition to HR and organizational-behaviour courses focused on family-business dynamics. The case is suitable for undergraduate and MBA (graduate) programs particularly in strategy and entrepreneurship. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to do the following:
  • Leverage industry-analysis tools such as Porter’s Five Forces.
  • Apply the blue ocean strategy canvas to analyze the competition by visualizing where small businesses may over- or underindex on critical value factors.
  • Diagnose a firm’s competitive advantage through a value, rarity, imitability, and organization (VRIO) lens while grappling with a paradoxical landscape in which suppliers are simultaneously supporting direct-to-consumer competitors.
  • Conduct a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis to identify internal and external opportunities.
  • Understand novel strategy concepts about simultaneous competition and cooperation (coopetition).
  • Integrate strategy, human resources (HR), and long-term succession decisions in the context of running a family-owned start-up.
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Case Study: Fleet Feet Charleston: Finding the Next Stride (English version) | Ivey Publishing