Two Stores, One Mission: Getting Gulf Coast Runners Into the Right Shoes
Few businesses on the Gulf Coast can trace their origins to a chance meeting at a New Mexico ski area, an Army helicopter cockpit over Iraq, and a blown-out pair of running shoes from a big-box store. Running Wild, the running and fitness retailer with locations in Pensacola and downtown Fairhope, can claim all three. What began as a modest shop in a Gulf Breeze strip center in 2000 has grown into one of the region’s most trusted destinations for runners, walkers, and anyone whose feet carry them through an active life.
At the center of the story are Paul and Cherie Epstein, the husband-and-wife team whose winding paths — military service, teaching, corporate sales — converged on a simple conviction: nobody should buy a running shoe without someone qualified to fit it.
A Pilot, a Teacher, and a Mountain Called Ski Apache
Paul Epstein grew up in Naples, Florida, and attended the University of Florida on an ROTC scholarship. For him, the military was not a detour but the destination. “College was a means to an end. I always wanted to fly helicopters,” he has said. Commissioned in 1989, he trained to fly helicopters at Fort Rucker near Dothan, Alabama, and was then assigned to Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. When Desert Storm began, he deployed to Iraq.
Cherie’s route to El Paso was academic. She earned her undergraduate degree in communications and marketing at Texas State University and a master’s degree in special education at the University of Texas at El Paso. A long-distance runner in high school and college, she was also a mountain biker and an avid snow skier, and she spent ten years teaching special education in El Paso while working part-time as a ski instructor and on the ski patrol in the Ruidoso, New Mexico, ski areas.
The two met after Paul’s return from deployment, at Ski Apache in Alto, New Mexico, where a circle of veterans and friends gathered around a shared love of the mountains. What followed was a long friendship that slowly turned romantic. “There was a sprinkling of romance the longer we were around each other,” Cherie has said. The couple began dating in 1996. In El Paso they mountain biked, skied, snowboarded, and ran together, and Cherie recruited Paul to announce middle school track meets when she took over coaching duties.
From Corporate Ladder to Storefront
After leaving the Army, Paul took a sales job with a plumbing distributor and began climbing the corporate ladder. When the company asked him to cover the Southeast territory, he and Cherie moved to Mobile — but they quickly decided Pensacola suited them better. Cherie took a full-time position teaching special education and coaching cross-country at Navarre High School.
The turning point came when the distributor Paul worked for, Fields and Company, was sold. Facing a professional crossroads, Paul heard a now-famous challenge from his wife: find something you truly love, you have a year, but we are staying in Pensacola.
He spent the year renovating the couple’s home and sketching out a business plan. The inspiration arrived through one of Cherie’s student-athletes, who had bought the most expensive shoes he could find at a big-box retailer. The shoe did not suit his high arches, it blew out, and he was injured. When Paul and Cherie visited the store themselves, they found no one on staff who understood running shoes or how to fit an athlete. The gap in the market was obvious to two people who had been runners for more than two decades.
“What’s a running store?” Cherie asked when Paul floated the idea. Neither of them had worked in retail. What they had was credibility in the running community and a clear sense of what runners needed. They signed a lease for a small space in a strip center next to a bike shop in Gulf Breeze, settled on the name Running Wild, and a neighbor designed a logo that the company still uses today.
Learning the Business One Customer at a Time
For the first year, Cherie kept teaching while the store found its footing. Paul, meanwhile, discovered he had a natural calling. “I loved it,” he has said of those early days. “I love meeting people and talking shoes and running.”
The formula worked quickly enough that the couple relocated the store to Palafox Street in downtown Pensacola, added running apparel, and then moved again into a larger space as the business expanded. By 2008, Running Wild had settled into East Pensacola Heights, where it evolved into what the company describes as a complete training, injury-prevention, and fitness resource for the Gulf Coast.
Crossing the Bay to Fairhope
In 2010, the Epsteins opened their second location in downtown Fairhope, a decision that made Running Wild a fixture on both sides of the bay. “It’s a completely separate entity. Yet we offer the same services there as we do in Pensacola,” Paul has said. “It’s been a great success and we are just as involved in the Eastern Shore community as we are in Pensacola.”
The Fairhope store later outgrew its original footprint and relocated to a larger space on Section Street, roughly doubling in size — an expansion Paul confirmed in trade-press interviews as the company entered its third decade. The added square footage gave the store room to expand its apparel offering, which had become one of its fastest-growing categories.
How the Pandemic Changed the Product Mix
May 2020 presented Running Wild with a challenge that tested the creativity of every small retailer: how to keep employees working when shoppers stayed home. The Epsteins responded by getting their online store up and running and personally delivering products to customers using the company’s bus. Rather than hurting the business, the pandemic boosted it, as people stuck at home rediscovered walking, running, and outdoor activity — and dressed more casually while doing it.
The shift reshaped the store’s inventory. “At first, about 70% to 75% of our sales was footwear. Apparel was such an afterthought,” Paul has said. That changed when Running Wild added lifestyle and athletic brands such as Lululemon, Vuori, and Rabbit; apparel now accounts for closer to 35 percent of overall sales. The store also built out its accessories selection with sports watches, sports bras, socks, and recovery products.
The Fitting Process Behind Every Sale
What distinguishes Running Wild from a warehouse or an online checkout is its fitting process, which applies to every item the store sells. Staff members are hired for their knowledge and trained to fit shoes to whatever activity a customer is pursuing, from neighborhood jogs to marathon training. Inside the Pensacola store, a back-room training facility hosts physical therapy sessions and coach-led stretching work with overhead bands — a level of attention that has become the store’s signature.
More Than a Store: Coaches, Clinics, and Community Races
Running Wild’s staff roster includes 16 coaches, a doctor of physical therapy, and a massage therapist. Every week the store sponsors group training runs, and its Race Management Program supports local events throughout the region. Through Run Pensacola, a partnership between Paul Epstein and local event director Adam Guess, the store helps produce professionally managed races built “by locals, for locals,” with proceeds directed back to area charities.
For beginners, the flagship program is My First 5-K, a 12-week training plan that meets twice weekly with coaches and covers the entry fee for a participant’s first race. Runners ready for more can join structured training programs for 10K, 15K, half-marathon, and full-marathon distances. Weekly group runs — including regular women’s running groups in both Pensacola and Fairhope — keep the community moving between race seasons.
Core Principles on the Sales Floor
The Epsteins describe the company’s core principles in four words: connect, equip, inspire, and encourage. They are deliberate about hiring, too. “We’ve hired an amazing team that knows what we want and how we want to do it,” Paul has said. “We want our team to own the culture like we do.”
That culture extends beyond the sales floor. Every pair of shoes returned for any reason is donated to schools for distribution to students in need, and the store rarely declines a request to sponsor a running event, particularly for young athletes. “We strive to be part of the community. We want to give back in every way we can,” Paul has said.
Twenty-Three Years In, Still Running
After more than two decades in business, the couple allows themselves one shared indulgence: travel. One ski trip and one mountain-biking trip each year, they say, keeps them connected to the activities that brought them together. Family time with their three daughters is equally protected — their oldest, in her early twenties, worked full-time as a pasta chef while attending Pensacola State College, while the twins finished high school.
Through it all, the store’s basic promise has not changed. Whether a customer is a seasoned marathoner or someone buying their first pair of walking shoes, the philosophy is the same: the right shoe, fitted by someone who knows what they are doing, makes all the difference. With casual athletic wear now standard in workplaces across the Gulf Coast, that promise has never covered more ground.
Running Wild operates stores in Pensacola and on Section Street in downtown Fairhope. Race calendars, training programs, and group run schedules for both locations are posted on the company’s website.