Conversation with… Dan Cartner of SportsShoes.com
In this latest Conversations interview, we chat with Dan Cartner, Head of Marketing at SportsShoes.com, about his career journey, the brand’s strong growth, and its focus on building a premium, community-led retail experience.
Can you tell us about your background. How did you first get into retail?
It’s a bit of a long story but also a short one! I’ve always worked at SportsShoes. I started when I was still at school, doing shifts in customer service on weekends and after school.
Retail has always been in the family – my mum has worked at SportsShoes for over 30 years. So, in many ways, I was born into the world of SportsShoes. I always had a sense I’d work here in some capacity.
Subscribe to TRBWhen I got to the point of choosing whether to go to university, I’d already started working in the product and marketing teams. Brett, who’s still our managing director and owner, said to me, “If you don’t want to go to university, I’ll support you through professional qualifications instead.”
And that’s what I did. I studied for my IDM and CIM qualifications, often travelling to London, while working full-time. Fourteen years later, I’ve progressed from exec to coordinator, then manager – and now head of marketing, as part of our senior leadership team.
From those early days, how has the business evolved?
When I started full time, the marketing team was just two people. Now it’s 36, and I’ve personally hired a lot of them. It’s been incredibly rewarding to build something that’s not just functional but full of talent and culture.
We’ve always believed in investing in people. We keep most of our work in-house, from creative to content, because it builds cohesion and agility. And we only work with external agencies when they bring something extra special to the table.
Do you all work in person or remotely?
Most of our team are in the office at least two or three days a week. Even our international marketing team, which handles translation and localisation, is largely onsite. We’ve found that being together really helps maintain our culture, spark creativity, and retain talent.
Can you tell us about the evolution of the business?
It was founded in 1982 in Bradford – it was a megastore of its time. A huge physical shop, thousands of products, every sport imaginable. Then we moved into mail order quite early, with a catalogue business that grew rapidly. We still publish a magazine twice a year that goes out to over 200,000 customers.
But the real turning point came around the millennium, as the retail landscape shifted and .com businesses began to take off. Brett came from a digital marketing background, so we pivoted quickly. We launched our ecommerce site early and closed the physical store over 15 years ago. Since then, we’ve been fully focused on direct-to-consumer ecommerce.
When I joined full-time, turnover was £11 million. Today, it’s £93 million. We’re now the biggest specialist running footwear and apparel retailer in the UK – and there’s a significant gap between us and others in our niche.
You’re the Head of Marketing at a digital-first business, but you’ve placed a big emphasis on physical engagement. What led to that approach, and what kinds of activities do you focus on?
Even before Covid, we were doing a lot of physical activations, but they were very brand partner led – meaning we’d work with brands on product launches, attending or hosting events, often creating content off the back of them.
But during Covid, everything shifted online, and it was clear that after the pandemic, brands who had scaled back physical engagement would need to rebuild it. That was our cue to double down, especially as big name brands started focusing more heavily on direct-to-consumer marketing, moving away from wholesale.
We realised: if we want to stay competitive, we need to own that physical space in a way others couldn’t.
So, we started investing in grassroots running. We now sponsor and partner with over 400 races annually. You’ll either see or interact with the SportsShoes brand at these events. We’ve got a dedicated events team too.
But importantly, we’re not there to sell. Our activations are about the experience, not transactions. We do giveaways, trial zones, fun things. It’s all about engagement, with no pressure.
One of our biggest wins was partnering with Parkrun, which took a long time to secure. But we knew how influential it was in the running community. That partnership is now a cornerstone of our strategy and it’s something no one else can easily replicate.
In the last four or five years, we’ve really ramped up our community building. Not just generic run clubs – we’re looking for communities with purpose. That might mean groups focused on mental health, inclusion, or environmental impact. The running and fitness space is saturated with clubs, so it’s about finding the ones with a real point of difference.
But it’s hard. Many of these communities are becoming commercially driven, which doesn’t always align with us. We don’t want to simply pay to participate. Our proposition is: we’ll spotlight what you’re doing, we’ll tell your story – not just throw money at it. That’s where we think we can make the biggest impact.
We notice that SportsShoes has some great brand ambassadors
We’ve now built a network of over 40 ambassadors across Europe, and we’re incredibly proud of the team we’ve put together. Europe is in a very different place compared to the UK – especially when it comes to content creators and influencers.
In the UK, ambassadors know the impact they can provide and look for opportunities that are both beneficial to them as well as a genuine connection with the brand. This is slightly different in Europe, where we’ve found many influencers are more motivated by the opportunity to be involved, collaborate and featured on our channels, and share our brand with their own audiences.
We’re doing a lot of work right now to refine our ambassador strategy. With the rise of platforms like Runna and Coopah, everyone seems to be an ambassador these days. It makes it tough to cut through and find the ones who really align with our brand pillars.
Our biggest challenge lately has been rewriting that strategy – getting more focused on authenticity. We don’t just want transactional relationships. It’s not enough to put someone on a contract and call it done. We want to over invest, amplify their content, and make the partnership meaningful for everyone involved.
In fact, we’re now allocating budget not just to work with micro-influencers, but to amplify them. Some of the best content we get comes from creators with smaller audiences – but it’s real, it’s honest, and it resonates. When we can add our media budget to that and boost their reach, everybody wins.
Can you share anything about what’s coming next?
We’ve got a lot going on. One of the biggest recent wins was our mobile app, which we launched less than a year ago after about four years of internal campaigning to make it happen.
Most of our traffic and conversions already came from mobile, so an app was a no brainer. We set an ambitious target of 50,000 downloads in year one – and we just passed 200,000. It’s been a runaway success.
The next step is bringing the app fully in-house. Right now, it’s a hybrid build between agency and internal, but we’re rebuilding it from the ground up to launch by the end of the year. We want full control over the insights, the data, and the customer experience.
Behind the scenes, we’re also about to sign off on a new enterprise-level customer data platform. Sounds a bit boring, I know – but it’s critical. We have millions of customers, but we want to know more about their behaviours, triggers, or what they truly want from us.
In a world where inboxes are flooded and everyone’s getting push notifications and SMS, we have to be better. We must ensure that our customers are getting content that’s relevant to them. And that takes real insight, smart segmentation, and a lot of back-end investment.
Once we’ve laid those foundations, we’ll be able to scale everything more intelligently – events, partnerships, ambassador content, and beyond.
Have you any plans for physical stores?
We are exploring physical retail – but if we go there, it will be completely experiential. It won’t be racks of product and slat walls. It’ll be spaces designed to showcase innovation, spark curiosity, and get people inspired to explore products online.
It’s about blending the best of both worlds: digital convenience with physical inspiration.
We’re possibly looking at some retail activations for next spring. But this won’t be your typical bricks-and-mortar experience. Think innovation showcases, immersive storytelling, product education. No racks of shoes. No standard retail.
What advice would you give to online brands seeking to create real-world connections with their customers?
I think there are a couple of key things we’ve learned. First, we’ve really tried to understand the context of our customers’ lives. What are they doing on a Tuesday evening? Where are they running on the weekend? What spaces do they live, play, and interact in?
That level of insight doesn’t come from data dashboards – it comes from real-world experience. So that would be my first bit of advice: go out and observe where your consumers are. Don’t just look at the numbers – look at the people behind them.
The second is legacy. One of our brand pillars is to leave a legacy, and I think every brand should be thinking in those terms, especially when it comes to physical interaction.
Ask yourself: What’s a lasting experience? What will people remember? If it doesn’t have the potential to create a meaningful moment, maybe don’t do it.
Whether you’re Gymshark running a new store in the Trafford Centre or a niche wellness brand hosting a community run – if it leaves a genuine impression, that’s where the value lies.
Looking back to your younger self, did you ever imagine being such a key figure in the business?
Honestly, no. I thought I’d do a stint and then probably move on. But I realised quite early that I loved the space. Even if I wasn’t on the retail side forever, I knew I wanted to be close to the brand side.
Originally, I thought I’d cut my teeth at SportsShoes and then maybe go work for a big global brand. But ironically, what I found is that at those brands, you often get less decision-making power. You get less autonomy. And that just wasn’t for me.
Here, I can make a real impact. I get to influence strategy, shape campaigns, build things from the ground up – that’s rare. And I’ve realised that’s what drives me.
It’s not always easy – I’m sitting on a board with people who are far more experienced. But I’ve learned to embrace that. I’m happy being the one who says, “Why can’t we change this?”
