Play It Again Sports Sarasota Fl
When Mark Zimmerman looked into buying Sarasota's Play It Again Sports, he knew it was a chain of sporting appurtenances stores specializing in selling used and new sporting equipment.
What the 61-yr-old native of New Rochelle, New York, was unfamiliar with was the origin of the proper noun.
Play It Over again Sports. Play it again, Sam, a misquotation of the line "Play it, Sam" from the movie "Casablanca."
Zimmerman'south independently owned store isn't exactly a gym joint, just because of COVID-19, many gym patrons accept turned to him for help.
And sales at Play It Again Sports have reflected this need.
"For the year, I'm upwardly double-digits," Zimmerman said. "I'm bitterly sugariness about how good the business is due to the pandemic. Just that doesn't mean I want this pandemic to continue. I want to exist normal, too."
For area sports enthusiasts in need of stuff, at that place's Dick's Sporting Goods, the nation'due south largest sporting goods retailer with approximately 850 stores and thirty,000 employees, and Play Information technology Again Sports, started in 1983 in Minneapolis and now with more than 450 stores in the United States and Canada.
Zimmerman was on the back end of a 37-year career every bit a district manager for CVS Chemist's in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut expanse. Merely the company reorganized in 2017, a shuffle which greatly increased his work load.
"More piece of work for the same pay," Zimmerman said. CVS eventually severanced him and the move caught him past surprise. "I would have retired with them."
But with three children in college and non notwithstanding gear up to sit at home, Zimmerman looked into buying into a variety of businesses. His beloved of sports zeroed in the former loftier schoolhouse baseball game player and track star in 2018 on the Play It Again Sports franchise for auction in Sarasota.
Zimmerman visited a couple of stores, ane being the Sarasota location, which had seen its sales tumble. The possessor operated 26 other Play It Again Sports franchises effectually Florida, but hadn't been in his Sarasota location in x years.
"I knew it wasn't very profitable," Zimmerman said. Still, he saw the potential in information technology, and after getting approving from the Winmark Corporaton, the franchiser of Play It Once more Sports, Zimmerman forked over virtually $200,000. The Sarasota location was his.
"I was nervously excited," he said. He renovated the store, but without much available inventory, Zimmerman began listening to the requests of his customers.
So he started selling discs for disc golf. Zimmerman brought in more than bikes and more fettle equipment. He got the necessary space by ridding the store of cumbersome hockey equipment.
Only six months after Zimmerman took over, Dick's opened a store at The Mall at University Town Middle. And for the first month at Play It Over again Sports, sales tanked.
"I was like, 'Oh, my God. What's going on hither?' " Zimmerman said. "Only later a calendar month and a half, information technology started going back upward again and it hasn't stopped."
That'south because COVID-19 has been good for Zimmerman's business concern. Bike sales are up more than 100 percent. He's operating with a ratio of 60 percent new gear and twoscore percent used due to no i coming in with their used equipment.
In March, when surface area gyms shut down, fitness junkies descended upon Zimmerman's store for equipment. "There are fettle junkies out there like you can't believe," he said.
Sales of dumbbells, benches, weight bars and plate weights exploded. People came to Zimmerman for inline skates, bikes and golf equipment. "It made up for the other stuff I was non selling."
He was forced to close in Apr, but since reopening on May 3, Zimmerman hasn't been complaining, save for one thing.
His vendors can't go him the equipment fast plenty. Zimmerman ordered 27,000 pounds of weights. Ten weeks subsequently, he got merely 8,500.
"And I can't tell the customer when he can get information technology," he said. Equally a result, Zimmerman will postal service on Facebook when an lodge of equipment arrives.
"And so it's get-go come, first served," he said. "I wish I had card blanche to be able to get whatever I wanted, when I wanted it."
Someday the virus will pass. Merely Zimmerman thinks the sale of certain equipment won't every bit part of the post-COVID-19 globe.
"I think, quite bluntly, (information technology volition last) until the end of time. I don't think it volition cease."
Source: https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/sports/2020/08/10/covid-19-sarasota-play-it-again-sports/3332346001/
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