Fleet Feet Sports Sees Business as a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Trey Barnes, owner of , has had his work cut out for him for the past year. In November 2010, Barnes began business in the same location that had been occupied for 31 years by Phidippides, a running store that had garnered a reputation citywide as the premier go-to athletic shoe store.

Barnes snapped up the store after the previous owners retired, but being the new kid on the block, he discovered he had to build trust from the ground up with customers who weren’t exactly eager to embrace him and the new store.

“People don’t like change,” he said. “They’ve got to feel out the new store and  know it and see what’s going on. It takes a while, but anything worth doing is not easy.”

The changes Barnes has made have been substantial. The store has expanded from the original 2,400 square feet to 4,000. The dark carpet was torn out and replaced by light-colored wood flooring. More lights and brighter colors give it less of a funky “running cave” atmosphere and more of a modern feel.

Phidippides’ four former employees now work alongside 10 new workers. The  store is open seven days a week, instead of six. Plus, Barnes has added a plethora of running clinics, product demonstrations and runs, and training classes for 5K races, marathons and half-marathons, as well as yoga classes for runners.  

The store also collected coats and blankets for the Salvation Army over the holidays and is training runners to help raise money for Northridge Hospital’s Center for Assault Treatment Services (CATS).

It’s all about helping people, Barnes said, adding “My goal in life is to have a positive impact on somebody every day.

“I found I could do that several times a day in the store,” he explained. “I could help someone be able to work out and not get hurt. That’s why I get up every morning and open the doors. I just happen to sell shoes.”

Barnes, a lean 6-foot-6 with a beard and clipped manner of speaking, does call up the image of a young mountain man. Indeed, he is from the hills of North Carolina and said he grew up building houses and doing framing work when he wasn’t playing basketball. He managed a fast-food restaurant in high school and college while he pursued studies in biomed technology.

But after burning out on studies, he took a job at a Fleet Feet store in Hickory, NC, and quickly went on to manage stores in that state before being asked to help start up a Menlo Park store in California. Owning his own store is the goal that brought him to Encino.

Currently, his customers come to the store via word of mouth and medical  referrals from podiatrists, physical therapists, orthopedic surgeons and others  who send those suffering with foot, hip or back ailments who need shoes to ease  their ailments.

“We don’t just cater to runners,” Barnes said. “We’ve got walkers, people who just work out or do Zumba, people who work on their feet all day like mailmen, older people whose feet hurt, dancers with tight calves, and all kinds of people  who work in restaurants who mainly need comfortable, supportive black shoes.”

For all of them, the goal is the same, he said: “We’re here to inspire people, make them active and happy and keep them going.”

, 16545 Ventura Blvd., Encino.