Michael Rubin, American businessman and philanthropist, was born on July 21, 1972, in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania.
He was born and raised in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, where he opened a ski tuning business in his parents’ basement at age 12.
Two years later, with $2,500 in bar mitzvah gifts as startup capital and a lease signed by his father, he founded Mike’s Ski and Sport, an official ski shop in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.
By the age of 16, he was approximately $120,000 in debt. With a $37,000 loan from his father and the condition that he enroll in college, he was able to reach a settlement with his creditors.
Before he came to college, the company had five ski stores and Rubin continued to run it as promised. He spent a semester at Villanova University before leaving after making significant profits in an opportunistic business venture.
This required him to borrow $17,000 from a friend to purchase excess equipment worth $200,000 at a deep discount and resell it for $75,000.
Michael Rubin’s career
After selling his ski business and using the money from his accidental surplus inventory, he founded KPR Sports, a surplus sports equipment store named in honor of his parents, which bought and sold surplus products brand.
When Rubin turned 21 in 1993, KPR had annual revenues of $1 million; By 1995, sales reached $50 million. In 1995, Rubin acquired 40% of Rykä, a manufacturer of women’s sports shoes.
Global Sports Incorporated, an apparel and shipping company founded by Rubin in 1998, later became the billion-dollar e-commerce giant GSI Commerce.
In 2011, at age 38, Rubin sold GSI to eBay for $2.4 billion, making a profit of $150 million. Rubin was able to acquire GSI’s consumer business at a bargain price because eBay only intended to compete with Amazon.com by acquiring the fulfillment business of large retailers.
It bought Shop Runner, a rewards program for retailers; Rue La La, a flash seller; and Fanatics, Inc., a licensed sports merchant.
Rubin is president of Rue La La and CEO of Fanatics. Simon Property Group’s partnership with Rubin to bring its mall inventory online and its $280 million investment in the project were announced on CNBC in 2019. FedEx purchased ShopRunner in December 2020.
Rubin has organized partnerships between Fanatics and more than 300 professional sports organizations, leagues and teams.
These partnerships included agreements with Nike, the National Football League and Major League Baseball that granted Fanatics exclusive rights to design, produce and sell all Nike fan gear for both leagues.
To produce hospital gowns and PPE for frontline workers, Rubin closed a Fanatics MLB uniform manufacturing plant at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020.
In August 2020, he raised $350 million for Fanatics in a Series E fundraising, bringing the company’s valuation to $6.2 billion.
At its 2011 Philadelphia Visionary Gala, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) recognized Rubin for embodying “the true spirit and determination of an entrepreneur” and inspiring NFTE students.
In 2011, Forbes named him one of the “20 Most Powerful CEOs Age 40 and Under.”
Rubin was named to Bleacher Report’s inaugural “Power 50” list of major athletes in 2018.
Between 2015 and 2019, Rubin was named to Sports Business Journal’s list of “50 Most Influential People in Sports.”
Rubin also received the Sports Business Journal’s Most Influential Person in Sports Award in 2021 and the Athletic Director of the Year Award in 2022.
Does Michael Rubin have children?
Michael Rubin was blessed with three children. He had a daughter named Kylie Rubin with his ex-lover Meegan. He had another daughter named Romi Rubi with model Camille Fishel. He has another daughter named Gema.