Sporting Goods Industry Hall of Fame

The success of ARTHUR GOCHMAN (Deceased October 25, 2010 at age 79) was not limited to the sporting goods industry. His success started in the legal world. Gochman attended the University of Texas School of Law and served in the Army. He practiced law in San Antonio, focusing on antitrust and civil rights. Gochman was extremely active in the civil rights community and in the 1950s and 1960s he helped desegregate several establishments. In addition, in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, Gochman brought the landmark school funding case San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, in which he argued that school funding based on property taxes was inherently discriminatory against poor and minority children. As he was finishing up his military service, his father Max Gochman had implored him to join his Army-Navy store, Academy Surplus. The store originally started as Academy Tire Shop in 1938. 

In 1973, Arthur Gochman bought Southern Sales, six Army surplus stores in Houston that were much like his father’s store in Austin. He closed two of the stores and renamed the remaining four Academy Surplus. His theory was because Houston was home to many University of Texas alumni, people who had shopped Max’s stores as students in Austin would recognize the name and continue to shop them in Houston. Sales in 1973 were around $1 million and Academy continued to grow. 

In the 1980s, Academy gradually switched its inventory mix from military surplus to sporting goods. Eventually the name was changed to Academy Sports + Outdoors. Arthur Gochman believed the strategy for his stores was heavy sales and low prices. In the late 1980s, he began centralized distribution, a system by which Academy shipped inventory to its stores every day from its warehouse in Katy, Texas. Gochman remained active in the company in various roles until his death. Academy Sports + Outdoors has more than 230 stores in 16 states, supported by more than 23,000 team members throughout the South, Southeast and Midwest. 

Please note: This biography was produced from the nominating materials in the candidate’s nominating year, so the information is not current.