sportstyle

First, in five words or less how would you describe the year 2020 for your BSN Sports? Demonstrating resiliency, adaptability and innovation. What were the high and low points of this Year Like No Other? We began the year out of the gate running with record sales in both January and February, heading toward record sales in March. Our business was running like a fine-tuned machine. Then, the pandemic hit. Due to the uncertainty, we quickly realized we had to make several difficult decisions for the greater good of our employees, customers and overall business. These decisions included everyone making shared sacrifices. What were some of those? In my 25 years of leading BSN Sports I have never witnessed such sacrifice and selfless- ness among our team. We had employees working reduced hours, working from home while juggling children's remote learning and in-person school schedules, and others working in our distribution facilities while adapting to new safety measures. My low point was having to ask these employees to make these sacrifices, through no fault of their own, without being able to answer the question "when will things get back to normal". Any specific examples? These employees have developed innovative solutions that will remain with our business well into the future. Such solutions include rolling out virtual coaching resources like customized Zoom backgrounds and digital e-cards for their student-athletes, setting up free weekly product and coaching webinars headed by recognized coaches, like Matt Rhule and Tubby Smith, to keep our custom- ers educated and engaged and introducing a campus branding initiative to celebrate the return of the students to the school campus. Our teams sought to keep customers healthy by creating Social and Emotional Learning Resources for Physical Educators through our OPEN Program and developing new lines of PPE product, like sublimated facemasks ONE-ON-ONE WITH ... Terry Babilla President and Chief Operating Officer, BSN Sports, Team Dealer Team dealers and vendors are going to have to become adept at doing business in a virtual world, solve for fast delivery and provide transparency for customers while navigating their B2C capabilities. 68 • sportstyle • March 2021 sportstylemag.com TEAM

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