Team Insight

12 • Team Insight ~ January/February 2025 teaminsightmag.com our own screenprint and embroidery. Once he retired in 2014, I took ownership of all of it, from the printing department to the real estate, to the team sports and the retail store. We've been operating like that under my ownership since 2014. Today, we have 22 employees. Tell us about your current expansion project. We're connected next to a large grocery store chain. rough some conversations with that chain we discovered they needed my property to expand and I wanted a piece of their property that they had on the opposite end of the campus. We saw an opportunity to sell the property to them and acquire their property and put up the new structure of this new facility, which broke ground back in June. We've gone from a 10,000-square-foot building to a 14,000-square-foot building that is now no longer 20 years old, so I've gotten away from all the repairs of a 20-year-old building. How did this benefit the business? is allowed us to design this building differently to meet the ways of today's team sports business. Back in 2005 we had more of a retail presence, so now we minimized the retail and created more office space for our sales team and warehouse space for holding more inventory and increased the square footage of our lettering department. With that expansion, now where we've been in screenprinting and embroidery we're expanding more into that direct print. Let's talk about the team business for a bit. What are some of your likes/dislikes? Even as owners I'm still wearing multiple hats. Yes, I'm the owner/manager/garbage guy. You know, as an owner you do a little bit of everything and you never quit doing that, but I'm still actively involved in outside team sales because that's still what I enjoy doing the most. Sometimes being in a store all day and trying to manage problems can get exhausting, so getting out and dealing with customers is still my escape. How has that side of the business changed? ere used to be a time when we were first in it where a football coach would call you up and say, "Hey Jeff, I need 50 T-shirts. I like gray, put something on it," and the coach didn't know what he was getting until you brought them to him and he was happy. Now for 12 T-shirts you go through 10 different mockups and changes and it gets frustrating because the orders today are what I would call high maintenance. So that's the dislike part of the business? That part is probably what still frus- trates everybody in the team business. Mistakes can happen very quickly, especially when owning your own printing company. Mistakes can be costly. You've got to be very attentive to all details versus you know, I hate to say it, the older days. It wasn't as time consuming as it is today. With 39 years of experience under your belt, can you tell us your secret of success. Oh gosh, I would think probably the secret to not just mine. Sports Spectrum's success is probably the longevity of doing what we've been doing. Our secret probably is sticking to our niche when we saw the world of retail change, to online buying, to major box stores. We realize there's some things that we don't do today that we did many years ago. We adapted to those changes and I think it's made us more successful. Sometimes less is better. We're probably a little bit smarter in our buying today and a lot of that has come about with us being a member of Sports Inc. since 2001. How about your personal method? I've always thought my gi is organization and structure and discipline. I'm sort of old school. I'll work off many to-do list on a weekly basis, but it's that mentality and how I deal with my customers that has helped my success and I think my customers over the years have learned that they can depend on me, as cliche as that may be. Anything else? We've had a great sales staff. We have very little turnaround and we've had employees that've been with us anywhere from — gosh, we have some that have been with us now for 25-30 years, a lot of them that are with us have been with us at least over five or ONE-ON-ONE PROJECT My days are long, but that's okay. That's sort of what fuels me. It's like most ownerships, you just balance a lot of things each and every day.

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