Sporting Life is in expansion mode
Luxury retailers like Nordstrom make for stiff competition
TORONTO — Sporting Life cofounder Patti Russell got her first pair of skis when she was 11 years old, but it wasn’t until a Grade 10 trip to Mount St. Louis, near Barrie, that they changed her life.
She tore a ligament in her knee on her first run down the mountain and help arrived in the form of David Russell, a classmate at Wexford Collegiate at Pharmacy and Lawrence in Scarborough.
“He jumped off the ski lift and that was it, I had to fall in love then,” says Patti, 62.
Married for 40 years, their mutual passion for outdoor sport remains one of the driving forces behind Sporting Life, a Canadian brand in national expansion at a time when other retailers are retrenching.
Since 2012, when the Russells and founding partner Brian McGrath sold 75 per cent of the business to Fairfax Financial Holdings, the company has grown from four Ontario stores to eight, including one in Calgary, one in Ottawa and a new store at Hillcrest Mall in Richmond Hill.
Two more stores are planned in 2017, one in Calgary and a 48,000 square foot store at Yorkdale mall.
Business has doubled since 2011, but it hasn’t been without its challenges, said David.
“Last winter was tough because it was mild … we had more snow in April than we had in any month in winter. It was great that it finally came, but sort of the wrong time.”
Sporting Life, which sells sports equipment and sporting and outerwear brands including Under Armour, Billabong, Barbour, Canada Goose and Arc’teryx, is competing in an increasingly crowded luxury field in Canada, against new retailing heavyweights like Nordstrom. It’s also facing competition from some of the brands it carries, with outerwear makers Canada Goose and Arc’teryx opening standalone stores at Yorkdale mall in October.
Toronto retail consultant George Minakakis says that while Sporting Life has built a solid brand, expansions into new markets are tricky and so is growing a business out of the owneroperator stage.
“They’re hands-on and things do change when you start to expand at that rate and you’re not as hands-on as you used to be,” said Minakakis, CEO, Inception Retail Group.
“You have to have a strong management bench with a good deal of experience because you’re going to be now managing at arm’s length.”
David and Patti said their bench includes numerous longtime staff, with decades of experience.
The year they opened the first Sporting Life on Yonge Street, near Eglinton Avenue, in 1979, it was 22 C on Dec. 20 and it rained all the way through Boxing Day. They had their first Boxing Day sale and it was a smash hit, David said.
Then it was a matter of striking the right balance between sports equipment and sporting wear and fashion along with the occasional offbeat item to keep things interesting. Patti — who remembers buying from distribu-
tors while in the middle of selling shoes and merchandizing in the early days — takes fashion cues from teenagers, magazines, movies and YouTube.
The couple travels to ski resorts worldwide to keep on top of what’s breaking or about to break.
“The Korean ski market is really out there in terms of fashion and design and it does tend to lead a lot of trends — it’s very à la minute,” said David.
McGrath, who recently retired from Sporting Life, provided the initial financial backing for the first store.
“Brian did footwear, I did equipment, Patti did the fashion and we didn’t always agree on everything that we did, but everybody had their own place to play in,” said David.
“I think all of us felt that we were way more successful with the other two.”
Patti said Sporting Life is focused on families. The new store at Hillcrest features a large, naturally lit children’s department with a wide selection of Spyder and Canada Goose, among other brands.
“In every category we start with the smallest the brand will make,” Patti said.
A program for families that allows them to trade in children’s equipment purchased the previous year for a discount on new equipment, to ensure they’re properly fitted as they grow, helps build customers for life.
“They’re our customers of the future, those little ones,” said Patti.
The demise of Target Canada in 2015 has made it easier for Sporting Life to expand, David said.
“It’s allowed some of the shopping centres that we were probably not going to get into, to shuffle the deck a little bit ant that’s really helped us out.”