When I was a student in the early 90’s the store was called Pro Sports, and I worked there part time. It was primarily a Frat. & Sorority Shop. A few years after I had finished school, and was beginning to enjoy some success in my career. The owner had a fatal car wreck (stayed on life support for quite a while), and the family was in real trouble. I initially bought the business to help out a family that had shown me some generosity when I was a student. It was supposed to be a temporary deal to help them recover from the loss of Mr. Castles.
As it became apparent that I was going to be stuck with my investment, I decided to really make a push towards the “Fan Shop” concept. Seeing a complete void in the market, I thought it would be simple. Expand the size of the store, hire a hot manager and plenty of sorority girls, change the name to Campus Sports. Keep in mind that other than my semester working at the store part time, I had absolutely no idea how retail worked, but believed that if other people wanted merchandise as much as I did, there was no way it could fail.
The athletic dept. and Coach Lutz in particular was very supportive of our idea. I doubled down on my investment and bought as much quality (and sometimes not so quality) merchandise as I could. The die hard fans who followed the board really helped the store get off to a pretty good start. The new athletic logo was only a year old and people who really wanted it were starved for merchandise. After the initial run of new merchandise went well we tried to expand the offering. The catch was / is you have to either spend thousands on “minimum” runs for one item or pay a premium for smaller “custom” lots that reduces any chance to make a profit. The other problem is 49er merchandise is not sitting on the distributors racks so you can’t just order a dozen to test the waters and see if it is going to sell. If more retailers would sell it, more distributors would have it. The old chicken & egg syndrome. Luckily, the greek business was booming and we were really doing a good job with that, and it kept the store profitable.
During the time of getting this cranking, I started a new venture in my “real” industry. Unlike Campus Sports, I knew something about this, and it really took off…quick. I was faced with making a decision. I loved the store, getting to work with the Athletic Dept. & all the customers / fans, and the idea that we were providing some items that people couldn’t find anywhere else. On the other hand, I knew I couldn’t put another dime into it, and get it to the next level and my time was becoming less available due to the other business.
I forget how the first contact with the lady that owned the flower/ gift shop came about, but she was interested in buying the store so she would have the address that would allow her to service the University Hospital with people who call in FTD flower orders. She was very successful at her other concepts and expressed that she had plenty of capital to really get the Charlotte gear in quantities that she could make it profitable. She had the idea that she would also sell the gear in her other stores all around the Charlotte Metro area. I really believe she had good intentions. I sold the business to her and really expected to regret the decision in a few years. Thinking she was going to be able to do all the things we wanted to do, and was going to grow it to be really something special. I think her problem was she hired a family friend to run the business, and charged him with growing the place. This is where NinerCentral’s earlier account comes into play. The guy who was her manager was supposedly going to buy her out and they had the whole deal worked out and he didn’t show up at the attorney’s office the day of closing. Afterwords, the [B]alleged[/B] embezzlement was discovered. She shut the place down and sold all the Greek stuff to Gone Greek (whose owner is a first class lady that used to work for us), and all the gear she could to Grey’s.
I agree with Metro that Football changes everything. I think if the right person would attempt this now, they could really do it big. Maybe Sparty will step up!
I actually discovered the old board when someone came in the store and told me there was a thread on our efforts. Unfortunately, I have been hooked on this place ever since.
Sorry for the long read… just thought I would clear up NinerCentrals post. Really wasn’t expecting it to turn into a novel.