Team Insight

I am extremely fortunate that I now live at the Jersey Shore — the real one, where we debate the difference between pork roll and Taylor Ham and where the first thing we do every morning is check the weather report and tide chart. It's not the fake Jersey Shore from MTV, but a very real place where we say please visit, spend your money and then leave. We are very friendly here, to an extent. at "friendliness" comes in part due to our proximity to New York City and all that it has to offer — Broadway, the Yankees (and Mets) and, for the purpose of this editorial, the bustling ports of New York and Elizabeth and Bayonne, NJ. From our beach here a couple of nautical miles down the Atlantic Ocean we can watch the huge cargo container ships make their way into port to unload and load again. But mostly they just sit there — waiting. For days and weeks on end. I have an app that identifies all of the ships at sea and allows me to to track their progress, or lack thereof. As I write this a cargo ship from the Maersk Line has been at anchor for more than a week, hopefully enjoying the mid-summer nights. But what it is really doing is costing a lot of people a lot of money – the shipping line, certainly, along with the ports and, most importantly, the companies and retailers waiting patiently for their goods to arrive on shore. (ose goods then have to be loaded onto trains and trucks for their final destinations up and down the East Coast, but that's an editorial for another day.) All this is my roundabout way of addressing the major concern of the business of sporting goods in mid-2022 — the unceasing supply chain disruption. e topic comes up in every story in this issue. e situation is unprecedented in the lifetimes of the team dealers we speak with and it has made for some unique challenges in supplying the product they sell. Indeed, most are telling us that selling product is now the easy part – the hard part, where they are spending way too much time, is tracking down the goods they sold and delivering everything by opening day, while all along the way managing the expectations of their customers. Paradoxically, that is the one bright spot in all of this disruption. Since everyone is, indeed, in this together, schools and teams are understanding that they should be happy to get their hands on whatever uniforms or equipment they can for this season and hope that the situation gets better next year. (Don't count on that yet, the experts tell us.) Yes, we are all in this together – certainly anyone who has searched for their favorite cereal or paper towels at the store lately is feeling the same pain as the dealer who has to turn to multiple vendors to fill one order. Yet dealers remain a creative bunch and remain dedicated to finding solutions to keep the ball rolling — but only if they can find a ball to sell. n Editor's note (two days later): Good news, the Maersk ship just headed into Port Elizabeth, so expect those basketballs to arrive any day now! COPING WITH A BROKEN CHAIN "Most dealers are telling us that selling is now the easy part of their business — the hard part is tracking down the product they sold, getting it into their own warehouses and delivering it by opening day, while all along managing the expectations of their customers." TEAM TALK / MICHAEL JACOBSEN 6 • Team Insight ~ July/August 2022 teaminsightmag.com STAHLS.COM | 800.4.STAHLS Save Stitches, Save Time stahls.com/ss-ln PRO LOOKS ARE A HEAT PRESS AWAY STAHLS' SIMSTITCH® LETTERS & NUMBERS TI0722 • Made from authentic Perma-TWILL® material • Laser cut with simulated zig-zag stitch • 18 popular athletic colors PROFESSIONAL LOOK OF EMBROIDERY WITHOUT THREADING A NEEDLE

• Cover