By the mid-1970s, Dave and Sandra Mason had outgrown their garage in Delta, Ohio — literally. Between the traveling shoe operation, a growing mail-order business, and word of mouth from runners across Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan, the operation needed a real address.
Dave's First Storefront
In 1976, Dave's Running Shop opened its first permanent location at Daly's Mall in Delta, Ohio. The space was small — around 400 square feet, smaller than a lot of living rooms — but the store had already built a following through years of clinics, races, and mail orders before a single customer ever walked through its door.
That loyalty showed up in one of the shop's favorite recurring traditions: on Thanksgiving weekend, when college runners came home to visit family, they'd line up down the sidewalk to get fitted before heading back to campus. For a shop that small, a line like that wasn't just good business — it was proof the community had found them.
The specialty running concept was still new in the mid-1970s. Big-box sporting goods stores didn't have staff who understood gait, pronation, or the difference between a training shoe and a racing flat. Dave's did — and that expertise, more than location or size, is what built the store's reputation across Northwest Ohio.
Landing Nike — and Nearly Losing Them
For years, Dave's carried Nike shoes secondhand, buying through a local distributor who already held a Nike account. That changed as the shop's reputation grew: Nike opened a direct account with Dave's, alongside a shoe lineup that, brand by brand, came to define the store — New Balance, Brooks, ASICS, Adidas, and eventually a full Nike line.
One story from this era says a lot about how Dave's operated: when Nike introduced one of its first true racing shoes, a local runner had been testing a pair and raved about it. Dave's placed an order for 100 pairs — months before most retailers even knew the shoe existed. When it finally arrived, a competitor called Dave, annoyed, wanting to know how Dave's had the shoes and he didn't. The answer was simple: Dave's had ordered early, because they were paying attention to what runners were actually telling them.
That relationship came with a catch, too. As Dave's mail-order business grew (more on that in Part 3), Nike made it clear that shops selling by mail needed a real storefront to keep the account. Dave's had already opened in Delta — good timing that kept both the Nike account and the mail-order business alive.
1978: Dave's Buys Its Own Building
Two years after opening at Daly's Mall, Dave's outgrew that space too. In 1978, Dave Mason bought a building of his own in Delta — known as the Journey's End building — and moved the shop there. It was very much a family production: Dave and an electrician wired the building himself, Sandra laid every tile in the corridor by hand and designed the layout, and a young James Mason hung drywall down the hallway during slow shifts at the store.
The Journey's End building didn't just house shoes. Over time it grew into a small strip of businesses that reflected the Mason family's other passions — including the Old Town Creamery, an ice cream shop that also sold nutritional supplements, and the House of Iron, a gym built around Dave's own competitive powerlifting. It's a reminder that Dave's has never been a single-focus retailer so much as a family building whatever their community needed next.
Building a Foundation for Growth
Looking back, the jump from garage to storefront wasn't one dramatic leap — it was a family paying close attention to what customers and suppliers needed, and moving fast when the moment called for it. That same instinct is what carried Dave's from one small store in Delta to four locations across Northwest Ohio today.
