In 1996 Esther Pauls and her husband Gord had an epiphany: he had started running seriously and got the idea to open a running store. Esther loved the concept and it certainly made sense; at the time there were no running stores nearby except for a small one that had just closed. Esther and Gord already owned an insurance company that made good money but were excited by the prospect of opening their own running store. And so, later that year, Runner’s Denwas born.
“We opened up and because it was so small we called it 'the den,'” Esther recalls. “We opened on King Street and Sterling Road and it was literally no bigger than 400 square feet.” Two years later Esther and Gord moved their business to a building on the east end of Hamilton’s popular Westdale Village.
