The Exchange Running Collective’s Co-owner Lauren Osborne on Choosing East Nashville and Prioritizing Art and Belonging

Not many people can say their first job as a teenager shaped their career trajectory, but it did for Lauren Osborne. She started working at her local running store in Greenville, South Carolina, when she was 14, and quickly realized what she wanted for her future. 

“I started there. I loved it. From that day on, I was like, I want to own a running store one day,” Lauren explains. “I’m probably one of the few people that are still doing the same job, in a sense, that they did in high school.” 

Lauren studied entrepreneurship, marketing, and management at the University of South Carolina. After college, she worked at another running store where she met her husband, James Osborne. Lauren eventually followed James to Portland for a job with Nike. As a tech rep, she traveled the country visiting local running stores with Nike’s latest products. 

While the two had talked about opening a running store together one day, it wasn’t until mid-pandemic, after Lauren and James had their third child, that the timing felt right. 

“With the pandemic, everyone felt so isolated,” Lauren explains. “More than ever, we wanted to be in a community.”

After researching potential locations, they made a short list based on what they were looking for in a city. Atlanta, Denver, and Portland were near the top, but Nashville — specifically, East Nashville — won out. 

Building with Intention  

When Lauren and James opened their store, The Exchange Running Collective, it was amid social unrest, driven by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and subsequent and prior racial injustices across the country. 

Instead of putting on blinders and staying in the lane of selling running gear, they built their business on three core pillars they felt strongly about and wanted to see reflected in their new community: running culture, art, and social change. 

Leaning into the crossover between creativity and running, and the ability for art to open minds and bring people together, they’ve worked with a myriad of local artists on apparel collaborations, film and photography projects, and even events with live music. 

From day one, they’ve supported local run clubs that are committed to creating inclusive spaces where runners from diverse backgrounds can find belonging. The Exchange Running Collective became the home base for run club 6RUN5 and remains in the regular rotation for others. 

Beyond weekly run club meetups, Lauren, James, and the team have created a couple of marquee running events for the community: “longest day of the year, fastest mile of your life” around the summer solstice, and “shortest day of the year, longest run of your life” around the winter solstice. 

They’ve also organized small-scale, one-off events, such as a 100-mile team race that finished at the store and coincided with this year’s The Speed Project. And for the up-and-coming generation of runners, they lead a summer track program for kids. Now in its third year, it’s grown to 250 runners.

“I am so passionate, having started running at 10 years old, about getting kids into the sport in a healthy and fun way that doesn’t feel like high pressure or high competition,” Lauren shares about the kids running program. “It’s just become something that everyone in our community really loves.”

Riding Against the Current  

In the three years since opening, The Exchange Running Collective has built loyalty across the East Nashville community thanks to these endeavors. Inside the store, they stock brands that often differ from other Nashville running stores and stay focused on developing regular customers — those who stop by every week, or even twice a week — rather than those who come in once a year. 

But owning a running store has its challenges, especially right now. Despite there being more runners than ever since the pandemic-era running surge, locally owned running stores are constantly competing with direct-to-consumer competitors such as Amazon. 

“Everything’s flat or down. Most people aren’t really growing,” Lauren says about the industry. “It’s honestly way harder than I think we ever thought it would be. But we do feel so confident and believe in what we’re doing.”

Below, Lauren shares about her running journey, why they decided to open The Running Exchange Collective in Nashville, the art collaborations they’ve organized, and ways they’re creating space for every runner. 

When did you start running, and can you share a few pivotal moments in your journey?

Lauren Osborne: I started running when I was 10 years old. We were at the beach with some family friends …. My friend’s grandmother was a fairly competitive master’s runner at the time, and asked everyone if anyone wanted to go for a 3-mile run with her. I only had Teva Sandals with me, because we were at the beach. I was like, ‘I’ll wear these,’ and I ran three miles without stopping. She was like, ‘You really should enter some 5Ks.’ So, my mom got me into some races, and then I started running with some clubs.

I went to an SEC Division I school — high-pressure. I came from a smaller state, being one of the top runners, moving into a big school, where I was one of the small fish in a big pond. I struggled a little bit with acclimating to that and then dealing with injury nonstop. 

After my sophomore year, I decided to quit, which was a really hard decision. I’m very thankful I did now, because that moment, I think, is why I’m still running. I was able to take a step back and re-find my love for running my senior year of college by running a marathon.

I just shifted my perspective about what running was for me. Then I ran marathons for a while, had my kids …. Post-kids, when we moved here to open the store. I didn’t really know what running would look like. I’ve kind of found a new love and a different love for it again. 

Right now, I’m just staying fit so that I can take on any challenges that are expected or unexpected. I’m trying not to be too rigid with anything. I just ran the Last Man Standing at BPN in April, and ran farther than I had ever run before. I realized my quad strength has kind of gone over the last couple of years, running too much flat. So, I jumped into a 100K coming up that’s got a lot of elevation. 

I kind of like doing that — just finding where I have weaknesses and seeing if I can challenge myself to try to get better.

What prompted you and James to open a running store?

Lauren Osborne: From the time we first met, I told him that’s what I wanted to do one day. He also felt like that. It had been something he had thought about. In 2011, we actually had the opportunity through Fleet Feet. It was a program where you could come manage a store and build equity, and eventually take over it. It didn’t feel right for us at the time, so we just said, ‘Maybe this isn’t it.’ We stayed with Nike. I think one time I even said to my husband, James, ‘If it’s a calling, it will keep calling.’ 

In 2020, height of the pandemic, we just had our third baby in October, six months into the pandemic. We were living in Portland at the time…unsure if that’s where we were going to stay forever to raise our kids. But we did want to find somewhere that we could put roots down.

We wanted to build a space that people could feel connection and just move away from a lot of the isolation and depression creeping in, currently with all the technology use. How do we help cultivate that environment? 

We opened a map to the U.S. We honestly didn’t know where we were going to go. We had always said Nashville was ripe for a new store. There is a Fleet Feet that does incredible here…but it’s hard to offer the community connection when you’re such a national chain.  

We felt like there was opportunity for competition here, and we wanted a few things: We wanted cities that were growing, cities that didn’t have enough stores for the size of the city, and then the final thing was where we wanted to raise our kids — a community that felt good. We came to visit East Nashville because Nashville was on the top of all of those lists as a good option, and we just fell in love with the neighborhood.

Why did art become a central theme for The Running Exchange Collective, and what are a few collaborations you’ve done?

Lauren Osborne: A lot of times in the running world, it can feel like there’s a barrier for someone who doesn’t already run, or if you feel like you’re a slow person compared to an elite person. What is a way to equalize every runner? 

Art is definitely a way that brings people together and opens people’s minds. Art can be a mural, it can be a merch design, but it also can be food or coffee. You can look at art in so many ways, so we always try to incorporate some element that’s art-focused. 

We worked with an artist, his name’s Josh Snodgrass, on a Cultivate Change apparel collection. It kind of looked like splattered paint, and we had the bubble print.

We had Anisha Youngblood, who is a violin player, one night at one of our events and runs — it was a girls’ run. [She was] playing the violin all night for everyone. 

Probably my favorite one, we did an event with On for the Cloud Monster, and we highlighted a guy named James Threalkill. He’s a local artist who played football at the high school across the street from the store. He did the illustrations for a book on The Tigerbelles. We celebrated the history of The Tigerbelles. They’re the women’s club that was born out of Tennessee State that competed at the Olympics in the ’80s, but very much trailblazers. 

James did portraits of people in our community that are carrying on that same mission. They’re showing up in a way that is helping trailblaze as well. We did a panel that night. That was a really cool moment …. That’s the meaningful stuff that really helps people feel more connected and get to know people in the community better.

What can you share about how you’re cultivating a space where everyone can feel a sense of belonging?

Lauren Osborne: We can say all day running is for everyone, but until we create a space that shows running is for everyone and offers representation and can tie all those things together, we’re just talking. We’re white people that can say we want everyone to have access to running, but unless we actually create an environment that shows people that they have access, it’s a lot harder to stand behind that.

I think it starts with who you hire. Who works at the store is really critical. We see it all the time, when our staff changes, a lot of times we’ll lose an audience of people that connect to that person. We try really hard to keep our staff diverse and with people that are connected to their own smaller communities. 

And then, we just really have a ‘serve the community’ mindset, wherever we can serve people and support. We’ve tried to offer as much as we can to groups that are doing a great job of bringing new people in and opening up the door for other people.

6RUN5, they were a very small group when we first moved here. Having a space and a platform has opened up a bigger opportunity for them to grow. That’s been a great collaborative effort. We also support a trail group, Sin Miedo, locally. Their mission is to grow BIPOC trail running. They work with other stores as well, but we will always support them just because of what they’re doing and who they’re bringing in. Latinas Run Nash is a great club. [The leader] hosts events monthly, and we try to always support them as well. 

We try to keep the door open for everyone and have good relationships with all the clubs because there’s so much value to what they’re doing in giving people a safe spot to show up.

Follow @theexchangerunningcollective on Instagram. 

“We can say all day running is for everyone, but until we create a space that shows running is for everyone and offers representation and can tie all those things together, we’re just talking …. We just really have a ‘serve the community’ mindset, wherever we can serve people and support. We’ve tried to offer as much as we can to groups that are doing a great job of bringing new people in and opening up the door for other people.” – Lauren Osborne