You can call me Dick

A couple of days after it was announced that Galyans Trading Company had been sold to the east coast based Dick’s Sporting Goods my sixteen year old daughter Berit and I were in the store and asked the sales assistant whether they would be able to keep their name.

Her shoulders slumped, her eyes rolled, and she said, “No, we’re going to be Dick’s.” Then she added, “I’m not looking forward to telling people I work at Dick’s.”

Turning to my daughter I asked, “How would you feel about working at Dick’s?”

My daughter, a tennis player said, “Work there! Are you jokin’ me? I wouldn’t even tell people I bought my balls at Dick’s.”

People on the east coast have assured me that Dick’s is a very well known and respected Sporting Goods Store (it is the largest sporting goods chain in the country) and that people there don’t snicker every time they hear the name.

Here in Minneapolis, we are still in the snickering phase. Fast forward several months. I’m driving down the highway and I see that the signage for Galyans has been replaced with a humongous sign for “Dick’s” If memory serves me correctly Sporting Goods is also on the sign but in much much smaller type.

That’s when I realized the name bothered me.

Sometime between Mrs. Oaks teaching me to read with Dick, Jane and Sally and 2005, the name Dick has become vulgarized. It’s not just another name for Johnson, Peter,John Thomas, my mighty sword, Willy, top gun, heavy artillery, and the One Gun Salute.

It’s a four letter word. To pretend that it’s not, is like walking in a parade with The Emperor’s New Clothes.

The changing status of the name Dick is not lost on the folks at Dick’s Sporting Goods who say despite the connotation of the name; they're sticking with it.

“Clearly we are concerned,” said Jeffrey R. Hennion Senior Vice President at Dick’s. But he added, Edward W. Stack, Chairman & CEO of Dick's Sporting Goods who is also the son of the original Dick, feels the name is on the door and that the name has a strong brand recognition for superior quality.

Across the country in Seattle, the folks at Dick’s Drive-In have also had to deal with the other meaning of Dick. General Manager Ken Frazier says it is a Seattle Institution and they have no intention of changing their name. He says, “Our position is to ignore it.”

Frazier did say, however, that to celebrate their 40^th anniversary in 1994 they decided it would be best to change their tag-line.

Pre-1994: We’re Dicks. Where taste is the difference

Post-1994: We’re Dicks Where taste has been the difference since 1954

Now, if my company was named Dick’s I would be less likely to ignore and more likely to change. That's me. I come from a heritage of name changers.

In the past several years my gas company, my electric company, my bank, and then my gas company again, have all changed their names. The fact is in today’s business environment businesses change names faster than some people go through Kleenex.

Unless your name is Dick, and then it tends to stick.