Play It Again Sports Jervis New York
When Mark Zimmerman looked into buying Sarasota'due south Play It Again Sports, he knew it was a chain of sporting goods stores specializing in selling used and new sporting equipment.
What the 61-year-erstwhile native of New Rochelle, New York, was unfamiliar with was the origin of the name.
Play It Again Sports. Play information technology once more, Sam, a misquotation of the line "Play it, Sam" from the movie "Casablanca."
Zimmerman'due south independently endemic store isn't exactly a gym joint, but considering of COVID-19, many gym patrons have turned to him for aid.
And sales at Play It Over again Sports have reflected this demand.
"For the year, I'm up double-digits," Zimmerman said. "I'm bitterly sweet about how expert the business is due to the pandemic. But that doesn't hateful I want this pandemic to go along. I want to exist normal, too."
For area sports enthusiasts in demand of stuff, at that place's Dick's Sporting Goods, the nation's largest sporting goods retailer with approximately 850 stores and xxx,000 employees, and Play It Once more Sports, started in 1983 in Minneapolis and now with more than 450 stores in the U.s. and Canada.
Zimmerman was on the back end of a 37-year career equally a commune manager for CVS Pharmacy in the New York, New Bailiwick of jersey and Connecticut area. But the company reorganized in 2017, a shuffle which profoundly increased his piece of work load.
"More piece of work for the same pay," Zimmerman said. CVS somewhen severanced him and the move caught him by surprise. "I would accept retired with them."
Simply with three children in college and not yet fix to sit at home, Zimmerman looked into ownership into a diverseness of businesses. His love of sports zeroed in the former high school baseball player and track star in 2018 on the Play Information technology Again Sports franchise for sale in Sarasota.
Zimmerman visited a couple of stores, one beingness the Sarasota location, which had seen its sales tumble. The possessor operated 26 other Play Information technology Once again Sports franchises around Florida, but hadn't been in his Sarasota location in 10 years.
"I knew it wasn't very profitable," Zimmerman said. Still, he saw the potential in it, and afterward getting approval from the Winmark Corporaton, the franchiser of Play It Again Sports, Zimmerman forked over about $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 bikes and more fitness equipment. He got the necessary infinite by ridding the store of cumbersome hockey equipment.
But 6 months after Zimmerman took over, Dick'due south opened a shop at The Mall at University Town Middle. And for the first month at Play It Again Sports, sales tanked.
"I was like, 'Oh, my God. What's going on here?' " Zimmerman said. "But subsequently a month and a half, it started going support over again and information technology hasn't stopped."
That's because COVID-19 has been proficient for Zimmerman's business. Bike sales are upwards more than than 100 per centum. He's operating with a ratio of 60 per centum new gear and forty percent used due to no one coming in with their used equipment.
In March, when area gyms shut down, fitness junkies descended upon Zimmerman's store for equipment. "At that place are fitness junkies out at that place like y'all tin't believe," he said.
Sales of dumbbells, benches, weight confined and plate weights exploded. People came to Zimmerman for inline skates, bikes and golf equipment. "It made up for the other stuff I was not selling."
He was forced to close in April, merely since reopening on May iii, Zimmerman hasn't been complaining, save for 1 affair.
His vendors can't get him the equipment fast plenty. Zimmerman ordered 27,000 pounds of weights. Ten weeks afterwards, he got merely 8,500.
"And I can't tell the client when he tin become it," he said. As a result, Zimmerman will post on Facebook when an gild of equipment arrives.
"Then it'due south offset come up, get-go served," he said. "I wish I had card blanche to be able to become whatever I wanted, when I wanted it."
Someday the virus will pass. But Zimmerman thinks the auction of certain equipment won't as office of the post-COVID-19 earth.
"I recollect, quite frankly, (it will last) until the end of time. I don't think it will finish."
Source: https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/sports/2020/08/10/covid-19-sarasota-play-it-again-sports/3332346001/
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