High-tech expansion is afoot

The first time Bill Robinson helped build a sporting goods chain, a Bradenton company that later became Champs Sports, technology was an afterthought.

Now, in his second go in the industry, technology is nearly every thought.

That's what Robinson has been thinking in the run-up to the latest Fit2Run location. Robinson, along with his son, Parks Robinson, founded Fit2Run in 2005. The company, with a corporate headquarters in Parrish, in north Manatee County, grew to eight stores by 2012 and now has 16 locations, including five in Greater Miami and one in Los Angeles.

The new location is a move, not an expansion. The company is opening a store inside the Mall at the University Town Center in Sarasota. It's across the street from the Shoppes at University Town Center, where it had a store for several years. The project to move into the mall, which opened last October, will cost Fit2Run at least $1 million — not including inventory. The store, on the lower level of the mall, near Dillard's, will even have a nutrition bar.

“It will be a premier store,” Robinson tells Coffee Talk. “It will have the most up-to-date technology in the country.”

The store will be stocked with high-tech performance eyewear, GoPro's and GPS wrist personal trainers, according to a statement from the mall. The store's technology also includes videotaped gait analysis and an iStep system that can pinpoint a customer's foot type, pressure points and shoe size. Says Robinson: “The way we can fit a person in shoes is phenomenal.”

The Robinsons were named Entrepreneurs of the Year in the Business Observer in 2013. The award was partially for the growth in locations, and revenues, which jumped 183% in three years, from $6 million in 2010 to $17 million in 2012. Bill Robinson's father, H.L. Robinson, founded Robby's Sports in Bradenton in the 1960s along with Bill Robinson's brother, Penny Robinson. Bill Robinson stayed with the company after it was sold to Woolworth Co., and again when it was Champs Sports. He later went into other fields.

Fit2Run is both Bill Robinson's re-entry into athletic retail and an opportunity to work with his son. Both have been successful and he believes it will stay that way. “We are a growth company,” Robinson says. “When there's an opportunity we will take advantage of it.”