Team Insight

SPECIAL REPORT: PANDEMIC SURVIVAL GUIDE Ocuda was meant to close his store in March 2020, but common sense prevailed. "I still came into the store, I cleaned up the place and worked on getting my inventory in order," said Ocuda. In the past two years he has sold the vast majority of the inventory that was stored in a warehouse. "I found a bunch of small items and I put them in a $1 bin out front," says Ocuda. "In the last two years, I think I sold $10,000 worth of items for a dollar." As teams began to return to play and supply chain issues began to surface, it quickly became clear to Ocuda that the local demand was greater than the local supply. "I had an order for 40 bats from UNLV's women's soball team and I could only de- liver 10 of them," he says, adding that he is still waiting on catcher's equipment that he ordered six months ago. One of the biggest issues during the pan- demic dates back to March 2020 and it has to do with team uniforms. "In many cases, I delivered brand new uniforms to youth baseball teams and then the 2020 season was cancelled," Ocuda recalls. "A year later, teams started playing again, but parents had to buy new uniforms for their children because they grew out of the uniforms that were never worn." FROM DOWNTIME T0 GOOD DECISIONS In Marietta, OH, Zide's Sporting Goods was closed for a month and co-owner Rod Zide recalls that he initially enjoyed the time away from the business — but then reality set in and it turned into a nightmare from there. "Everybody on our sta was eager to get back to the oce." e most important and welcome decision for Zide's – one that injected much-needed cash ow into the business – was the an- nouncement in July 2020 that high school football would be played that fall. "If we didn't have high school football that fall, I don't know where we'd be today," Zide admits, recalling the immediate nancial hit the dealer took in the early days of the pandemic. e rst casualty was the fanwear for the West Virginia boys' and girls' state high school basketball tournaments in Charleston. e tournament was underway when state ocials had to immediately cancel the 2020 event. "Our sales team had to pack up the shirts, put them back in boxes and come back to our oce," recalls Zide. "ose shirts – just over a thousand of them – are packed away in a box in our warehouse." ey remain unsold to this day. While Zide's prot-and-loss ledger showed the nancial impact of the untimely can- cellations, he really felt sorry for the high school seniors who didn't get a chance to nish their winter sports seasons or play baseball, soball, lacrosse, golf, soccer or track during the Spring 2020 sports season. "As a high school athlete, you've waited your entire athletic life for the chance to have a memorable senior season and then it was taken away," Zide laments. Looking back, Zide made one big decision in the fall of 2019 that proved to be a critical one for the future of Zide's Sporting Goods, which had sold game-day apparel to fans at home football games for West Virginia University (WVU) since 1983. To have enough stock for the fall season, he would normally order the merchandise the previous October for delivery the following June. Zide and his game-day staff would then drive two 26-foot trucks lled with WVU-themed apparel to home games at Mountaineer Field at Milan Puskar Stadium, which was always filled with 60,000 Mountaineer fans eager for WVU merchandise. Yet, for a reason not at all related to COVID, in the fall of 2019 he decided not to renew the game-day apparel contract with WVU for the 2020 season. As it turned out, attendance at college football games was extremely limited that fall due to COVID restrictions and it would have been di- cult, if not impossible, for Zide's to recoup a massive apparel investment of close to $500,000 in 2019. at nancial disaster was avoided. "Looking back, that was one of my best nancial decisions I have ever made," says Zide. "It would have been a nancial di- saster for us." CHASING NEW BUSINESS In Colorado Springs, CO, Colorado Sports was closed for ve weeks from mid-March until late April of 2020, but even then it took quite a while for the local school business to return. "When we opened our doors (in April 2020), business was slow because school sports in Colorado were delayed until October 2020," reports owner Bob Carlucci, adding that two of its colleges that play NCAA Division II football did not play football that fall. While many team dealers were able to gen- erate some revenue selling to travel baseball, soball, soccer, basketball and lacrosse teams in the summer of 2020, Colorado Sports doesn't sell to those teams. "We have never sold to travel teams," says Carlucci. "Our customers are from small colleges, high schools and middle schools." To help generate cash ow, Carlucci's sales team chased new business. "We have done more corporate business in the area," Carlucci reports. Here, too, pandemic-related supply chain issues haunt Carlucci, who says one of the biggest concerns is that he won't be getting shoulder pads this fall for his local football teams because of a sourcing issue. "I have been told that I won't be getting any new shoulder pads because they need buckles, snaps and rivets which, unfortu- nately, are made in Ukraine," says Carlucci. "And the shoulder pads are manufactured in Vietnam." Despite sourcing issues, Carlucci says there is currently a silver lining that he found in the whole process. "Fortunately, the school business is back to normal." 32 • Team Insight ~ May/June 2022 teaminsightmag.com

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