Meet Chad Crawford of Milestone Running in North Park

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chad Crawford.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Chad. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Greg Lemon, my business partner, and I have had running in our lives in one way or another since childhood. We both competed as teenagers and Greg went on to run track and field at UC-Riverside and I started coaching at the high school level in my home state of WI while in college still. In 2009 I moved to LA and Greg and I met and both worked at a run specialty store in Santa Monica. Greg ended up moving to San Diego in 2011 to help his brother with a startup business and reached out to me shortly after regarding starting our own run specialty store in the SD area.

Living in Mission Valley at the time, we spent a fair amount of time up in the North Park area and after eventually collecting funding, we chose that area as the location for our storefront due to the lack of that type of service in the surrounding area. We opened up shop in 2013 and started a Wednesday night run club that consisted of about 8 people for a while and it just sorts of took on a life of its own and now regularly draws over 100 runners on Wednesday nights.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It’s been relatively smooth sailing for us, fortunately. The area (North Park) that we live in and do business in is very supportive of small business and people who embrace the concept of shopping local. The most difficult and time-consuming hurdle was receiving initial funding. After a year or so of trying to scrape together the money to start a retail business, we were connected with Accion, which is a non-profit that provides loans for small businesses in the SD area.

Once they approved us, we had already had connections with regional sales reps, etc from working in the specialty shop in Santa Monica. We did/d0 a lot of grassroots marketing, forming relationships with local training and running groups, and setting up booths and cheer stations at a lot of races throughout the community.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Milestone Running – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
We’re in the run specialty business, which from the general perspective is a place that focuses on selling running specific items such as; shoes, apparel, socks, nutrition/hydration, GPS watches, and plenty more. Most run specialty stores, ours included, offer some type of gait analysis which is essential as a way of pairing your running style with the proper type of shoe. For a lot of people, new runners especially, walking into a shoe store and picking out a shoe can be an overwhelming process, so our goal is to streamline that process as much as possible.

As a store, we employ 2 other people who have both worked in run specialty stores for a number of years and know as much about the product and running as Greg and I do. It’s safe to say we take pride in our product knowledge and ability to answer and running related questions whether it be training advice, injury prevention and strength training, nutrition and hydration related questions, and much more. By no means are any of us medical professionals but we’ve gathered enough information throughout the years to at least provide an educated guess as to what a solution might be for any running related issues.

I think any of us working there would say that we’re most proud of the fact that we don’t view ourselves as being in sales rather than providing a customer with the knowledge to make a decision prior to purchasing something. There have been plenty of times where we’ve talked people out of buying an item because we genuinely didn’t think it was worth them spending their money on that item. I can honestly say that we’re pretty much on the complete opposite end of the spectrum of high-pressure sales and being able to provide that to our customers is a great feeling.

We’ve also had enough customers give us feedback on how well entrenched we are in the local running community to make us feel like we’re doing something right from that standpoint. Our community in general, not just the running community, is very important to us and we don’t take those comments lightly.

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
As with just about any businesses out there, if the opportunity presents itself and timing is right in the future to open a second location, then that’s definitely a possibility. On the flip side of that, we’ve seen and heard of enough businesses in the run specialty market expand to multiple doors and end up having to close doors relatively quickly and we hope to avoid falling into that category.

As I stated before, with all the opportunity and convenience of online shopping, the North Park neighborhood and surrounding areas along with all the different running groups in the area, such as San Diego Track Club, have all been pretty darn supportive of us since we opened five years ago and our focus as of now is to continue to provide them with the best product and service as possible. If we’re fortunate enough to be embraced by another community within the San Diego area in the future, then we’d obviously be grateful for that, but as of now, we’re very happy with where we’re at.

Contact Info:

• Address: 2545 El Cajon Blvd Suite D San Diego, CA 92104
• Website: www.milestonerunning.com
• Phone: 619-795-6171
• Email: milestonerunning@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/milestonerunning/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Milestonerunshop/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/milestone-running-shoe-store-san-diego

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