The story below is from our March/April 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
Photo above: ©Lindsey Hull
Matt Thompson doubled down and started chasing bigger dreams in spite of his pain.
Matt Thompson is the type of man who has always gone all in on everything he has ever done, he says. He’s never just dabbled in anything. That’s how he and his wife Tabitha did things, and that’s how he’s carrying on now that she’s gone.
“That’s who Tab and I were — if we were going to do something, why not be the best that we could be? It was always, let’s go all in,” he says.
She liked to ride horses; he liked to kayak. They started to run together, and she discovered how much fun races could be.
Now, Matt is a marathoner and a triathlete. He’s also a business owner. To get there, he’s had to overcome some pretty hefty hurdles.
Tabitha Thompson was tragically killed in February 2022 when she was struck by a driver while riding her bicycle one Friday afternoon.
Not long after his wife passed away, Thompson had coffee with Blaine and Robin Lewis, then-owners of Fleet Feet Roanoke. Since Tabitha’s death, he had been working with Fleet Feet as a business consultant.
This meeting was different. Thompson told Blaine and Robin Lewis that he wanted to buy the store. He knew they might say no. But he also knew that he could make the store awesome, he says.
This wasn’t a new idea for Thompson. Several years prior, Tabitha had asked him what he would do, if he could do anything at all. His response?
“I was like, man, owning Fleet Feet must be the best job in town,” he says.
He started working for the store in March 2022 and finalized the sale that December.
“He realized this was his new why in life after he didn’t have Tabitha anymore, and it’s a perfect fit … It’s exciting. It was a good change for all parties involved,” Robin Lewis says.
Thompson knows business. He earned his undergraduate in accounting at West Virginia University and eventually went on to Duke for his MBA.
“Right out of college, I came to Roanoke. I thought I’d be here for, I don’t know, two or three years and I’d go find the next town,” he says. That was 2003.
Thompson was working for Novozymes for much of that time. While away on business, he eventually started looking for other places to live. He couldn’t find any place that had all of Roanoke’s amenities without downsides like traffic or crime, he says.
“We’re a very safe community. It’s welcoming. It’s small and easy to get to know people. Yet we have rivers and we have mountains,” he says, adding that you can drive to larger cities in just a few hours. So, he stayed. Currently, he lives in Roanoke City, so close to Vinton that he considers himself a dual citizen, he says.
Now, Thompson’s primary focus is Fleet Feet. He recognizes that Fleet Feet is more than a store — it is the home base for a large part of the region’s fitness community.
“He believed in our mission and passion of enhancing the lives of everyone who walks through the door and giving back to the community,” Robin Lewis says.
He aims to grow the culture even further by continuing to host weekly pub runs and other activities and introducing a new endless training program. Thompson has promoted more inclusivity by rebranding the store’s social media group to place more emphasis on generalized movement — though running is still a large part of Fleet Feet’s brand identity.
“He pours into those around them [and] wants to see everyone succeed,” says Jenn Reed, friend and Fleet Feet czar of guest experiences — a title that Thompson gave her, she says.
That’s just a start — as always, Matt Thompson is all in.
The story above is from our March/April 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
