Get Up and Try Again Sports
When Marker Zimmerman looked into ownership Sarasota's Play Information technology Again Sports, he knew it was a chain of sporting goods stores specializing in selling used and new sporting equipment.
What the 61-year-old native of New Rochelle, New York, was unfamiliar with was the origin of the name.
Play It Again Sports. Play it again, Sam, a misquotation of the line "Play it, Sam" from the picture "Casablanca."
Zimmerman's independently owned store isn't exactly a gym articulation, but considering of COVID-19, many gym patrons have turned to him for help.
And sales at Play It Again Sports have reflected this demand.
"For the year, I'yard up double-digits," Zimmerman said. "I'm bitterly sweet about how good the business organisation is due to the pandemic. But that doesn't mean I want this pandemic to continue. I want to be normal, likewise."
For area sports enthusiasts in need of stuff, there'southward Dick's Sporting Appurtenances, the nation's largest sporting goods retailer with approximately 850 stores and xxx,000 employees, and Play It 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 Pharmacy in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut area. But the company reorganized in 2017, a shuffle which profoundly increased his 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 take retired with them."
But with three children in college and not yet ready to sit at home, Zimmerman looked into buying into a variety of businesses. His love of sports zeroed in the former loftier schoolhouse baseball game player and runway star in 2018 on the Play It Once more Sports franchise for sale in Sarasota.
Zimmerman visited a couple of stores, i beingness the Sarasota location, which had seen its sales tumble. The owner operated 26 other Play Information technology Over again Sports franchises around Florida, but hadn't been in his Sarasota location in ten years.
"I knew it wasn't very profitable," Zimmerman said. Still, he saw the potential in information technology, and subsequently getting approval from the Winmark Corporaton, the franchiser of Play It Again Sports, Zimmerman forked over nearly $200,000. The Sarasota location was his.
"I was nervously excited," he said. He renovated the shop, simply without much available inventory, Zimmerman began listening to the requests of his customers.
So he started selling discs for disc golf game. Zimmerman brought in more bikes and more fitness equipment. He got the necessary space by ridding the store of cumbersome hockey equipment.
Simply vi months after Zimmerman took over, Dick'southward opened a store at The Mall at University Boondocks Centre. And for the first month at Play It Once more Sports, sales tanked.
"I was like, 'Oh, my God. What's going on hither?' " Zimmerman said. "But after a calendar month and a half, it started going support again and information technology hasn't stopped."
That's because COVID-19 has been good for Zimmerman's business organisation. Bike sales are upwards more than 100 percent. He's operating with a ratio of 60 percent new gear and 40 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 shop for equipment. "There are fitness junkies out in that location like you lot can'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, but since reopening on May three, Zimmerman hasn't been complaining, save for one thing.
His vendors can't get him the equipment fast enough. Zimmerman ordered 27,000 pounds of weights. Ten weeks later, he got only 8,500.
"And I can't tell the customer when he can get it," he said. Equally a result, Zimmerman volition post on Facebook when an order of equipment arrives.
"Then it'southward beginning come, first served," he said. "I wish I had carte blanche to be able to get whatever I wanted, when I wanted it."
Someday the virus will pass. But Zimmerman thinks the sale of certain equipment won't every bit part of the post-COVID-nineteen world.
"I think, quite frankly, (it volition terminal) until the finish of fourth dimension. I don't recall it will stop."
Source: https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/sports/2020/08/10/covid-19-sarasota-play-it-again-sports/3332346001/
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