Hansen: Demise of Sport Chalet a statement of our new culture
While it’s not quite Walmart on Black Friday, the scene at any Sport Chalet right now is still a spectacle — and a little sad.
In the retail industry, a 10% discount is table stakes — almost paltry — but combine it with “going out of business,” and somehow it means all bets are off.
Sport Chalet is the latest brick-and-mortar brand to lose to the Internet juggernaut. Headquartered in La Cañada Flintridge, the 47-store chain announced April 16 that it was closing all of its stores, including seven in Orange County: Brea, Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Laguna Niguel, Lake Forest and Mission Viejo.
Overnight, the store stopped selling goods online and will shutter its doors as soon as it can. There is no official final date other than “several weeks” after April 16.
If customers have remaining balances on gift cards, which the chain stopped accepting on April 29, they can transfer the balances to the chain’s sister stores, Eastern Mountain Sport or Bob’s Stores. Visit sportchalet.com for more information.
In a brief announcement, the company did not give any reasons for the closure, but financial records indicate that it has struggled for several years. It was purchased for $17 million in 2014 by Connecticut-based Vestis Retail Group but reported its last annual profit in 2007. It was also more than $52 million in debt at the time of the purchase, according to public records.
Other general-purpose sporting goods stores are struggling as well. Last month, Sports Authority filed for bankruptcy protection and plans to close 140 of its 463 stores, including 19 in California.
The ones that are succeeding tend to be bigger operations with stronger suppliers and a healthier ecosystem, including specific online agreements.
For example, Dick’s Sporting Goods, with 645 stores, had sales of $7.3 billion in its fiscal year ending Jan. 30. Best-of-breed industry leaders like REI and Cabela’s Inc. can combine differentiation, customer loyalty and online price controls that smaller operators like Sport Chalet could not.
Regardless of the economics, the personal and community effects are harder to measure — yet they are clearly important. In addition to the estimated loss of 1,200 full-time Sport Chalet workers and 1,600 part-timers, there is the continuing change to our shopping culture.
Put it this way, Sport Chalet wasn’t like a Starbucks.
Sport Chalet was where we took our kids when Little League started every year to get new cleats, a bigger bat or a new glove.
It’s where we rented skis and bought our first snowboard.
We learned to scuba dive in a company pool.
We bought bike repair kits, backpacks, wetsuits, kayaks, yoga pants, Go Pros, ultralight fishing poles, bug spray, life jackets, Webers, Kobe gear and countless other items that defined our outdoor life.
Could we get them at Walmart, Amazon or some other discount store? Sure. But if you had a Sport Chalet nearby, you probably just went there because it was easier and you knew you’d find what you were looking for.
There was also something reassuring about trying it out at the store: the swing of the bat, the feel of the basketball, the stroke of the putter, the texture of the space-age polymer undergarment.
As a culture, we are continuing to buy ourselves into a virtual corner — specialized, optimized and stripped bare any semblance of palpable living.
Why shop brick-and-mortar when you can do it from your couch with virtual reality glasses?
The only barrier to complete online shopping is the desire to try before you buy, especially with clothes. But that’s changing.
At the year’s SXSW Interactive conference, VR lounges were more popular than ever. The reason is the technology is getting good — really good. Innovations are making online shopping as real as the real thing.
Augmented reality, for example, expands VR by allowing people to integrate real and virtual scenes. A couple years ago, IKEA was one of the first major retailers to pioneer the use of augmented reality with its catalogs. Using only a smartphone or tablet, you can “see” the furniture in your home before buying it.
What used to be the realm of science fiction is now mind-blowing reality. Every day there are bigger and better technical solutions that enhance our approach to consumerism.
In the process, however, traditional stores — and some family traditions — are being redefined or simply eliminated.
Some people will lament the loss; others will embrace the change.
I’m guessing most people are somewhere in the middle, wondering when exactly the world starting spinning so quickly.
--
DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at hansen.dave@gmail.com.