Decades ago, the Wilmette Bicycle & Sports Shop on Greenbay Road carried everything from guns to model airplanes to complete gear for the avid fisherman.
But as customers’ interests changed and new, specialized competitors appeared nearby, Wilmette Bicycle had to change, too. Guns disappeared a long time ago, while fishing lures and camping equipment took a hike years later.
Now the store, owned by the second generation of the Versino family, survives by selling lots of sports equipment to area kids and schools, and offering high levels of customer service.
“A lot of the customers who come in, I know by their first name,” said Larry Versino, who owns the store with an older brother and a cousin.
Reinventing yourself as a retailer. That’s the key to making it in today’s fiercely competitive sporting goods business. But it’s something that Chicago’s biggest hometown player in sporting goods, Sportmart Inc. of Wheeling, was slow to do, said retail consultants.
That inertia led to a string of losses for Sportmart and, ultimately, its sale Monday to Gart Sports Co. of Denver. The combination will create the second-largest sporting goods chain in the country, with 120 stores in 13 states.
And it marks the end of an era for Sportmart, which was once one of the industry’s leaders in building “superstores,” which offered a huge amount of inventory stacked high in a “big box” format.
“You can’t just have a big store with a lot of merchandise. You have to have a big store that looks good,” said George Whalin, president of Retail Management Consultants in San Marcos, Calif. After closing down its Canadian stores last year, Sportmart took a $20 million charge against earnings and posted a $27 million loss.
It’s easy to attribute Sportmart’s travails to bigger, better competitors such as The Sports Authority. The Ft. Lauderdale-based chain, spun off by Kmart Corp. in 1994, rolled into the Chicago area with bigger stores and more tightly focused collections of lifestyle-related merchandise.
“When they got some competitive challenges, Sportmart grew its square footage and expanded geographically. It didn’t reinvest in its infrastructure,” said one retail source who asked not to be named.
Of course, the growth of large, national chains has spelled the end for a long list of mom-and-pop type retailers, including grocery stores, drugstores, regional discounters and some department stores. After the big players cut gross margins and lure customers away with better selections, the little guys usually sell out or fold.
But that analysis is too simplistic to explain what befell Sportmart, retail analysts said. The sporting goods business is not just consolidating. It’s also fragmenting, with new specialty stores for everything from golf clubs to running shoes.
“To some extent, everybody is in this business,” said Skip Helm, retail analyst with William Blair & Co. in Chicago.
Athletic shoes, which make up 25 percent of a typical sporting goods store’s sales, are available every place from specialty stores such as Foot Locker to discounters such as Wal-Mart, Target and Kmart.
Need golf clubs? Try Nevada Bob’s or Golfsmith Golf Equipment. Want hockey equipment? Head for Jerry’s Hockey & Skate Shops, with locations in Winnetka, Rolling Meadows, Glenview, Skokie and Crystal Lake.
Sears, Roebuck and Co., better known for tools and paint, has become the largest retailer of fitness equipment, with an estimated 18 percent of all fitness sales.
On Wednesday, Sears will attempt to build its franchise further with an exclusive agreement with NordicTrack to sell its branded equipment, the first time that the Chaska, Minn.-based equipment maker has allowed another retailer to sell its goods.
Even with the Sportmart-Gart consolidation, the shakeout in the sporting goods industry is expected to continue for the foreseeable future, experts said. Last year, the industry lost an estimated $500 million, even as The Sports Authority, the largest player with 174 stores, reported strong results.
That’s a disquieting forecast for the remaining neighborhood sporting goods shops such as Wilmette Bicycle, which has experienced flat revenues for the past several years. But even though he and his partners are putting in longer hours, Larry Versino said he isn’t discouraged. There’s always a new opportunity out there, whether it’s adult hockey leagues or women’s sports.
When someone approaches him about selling the store, he politely declines. “It’s an interesting idea, but after 30 years, I don’t know what else I’d do.”
