Schuylkill Valley Sports rebrands, aims to mount comeback with concept stores
Despite closing its last tricounty-area brick and mortar store almost a year ago, Schuylkill Valley Sports isn’t ready to take its ball and go home just yet.
The Pottstown-based sporting goods retailer announced it has rebranded to SV Sports in April, while the company continues to maintain a local presence through uniform sales and its revamped website, svsports.com.
Perhaps most interesting of all, SV Sports isn’t abandoning brick and mortar, either.
Rather, the strategy is to create a sporting goods store for the future.
“Retail is going to complement our model,” said Jason Lutz, president of SV Sports. “There’s a dotcom, there’s our team uniform business, then there’s retail. Those are the three legs of the stool. That’s how we’re going to interact with the athlete.”
Renovations are already underway at SV Sports locations in Quakertown, Bucks County and Spooky Nook Sports in Lancaster County — what will be the first in a new line of “experiential” stores scheduled to launch in the fall.
The concept, which SV Sports touts as innovative and cuttingedge, will be the intersection of athletic performance with culture and lifestyle, said Ralph Greene, chief marketing officer.
“Something that’s very performance-oriented, so you can get what you need to do your thing,” Greene said, only “a little cooler, a little more fun.”
The goal is also to make stores more accessible to athletes, moving away from malls and shopping centers to places or areas where athletes congregate.
How SV Sports can change sporting goods
SV Sports is still guarded about some of the specific details on its plans for new stores, but stressed the need to create a real, lasting connection with athletes.
Lutz cited uniform sales as an example of where the experience can be improved, noting an event that should be memorable often “falls flat.”
“One of the most exciting moments of being an athlete is either when you make the team and you get your uniform or you know you’re getting new uniforms,” Lutz said. “And, for the most part, it’s a pretty lousy experience. A lot of times, a brown box shows up to a coach’s or AD’s office, they pluck the jerseys out, toss them to the kids and that’s it.
“Not to mention, from our perspective, if we happened to make those uniforms up and they’re the coolest uniforms in the world, we don’t really get any credit from that.”
SV Sports is currently envisioning ways to make uniform day feel like the special occasion that it is — along with the added benefit of bringing people into the store and generating brand loyalty.
“Picture this place where we can invite the entire team to come in,” Lutz said. “There’s a locker room in there, the lights come down and the music goes up, then there’s this big uniform unveil. The kids start taking pictures, they’re putting their stores up on IG and you create this really cool moment.
“Now you’ve created this really elevated experience and you engaged the community on the local side and connected with the athletes on a personal level.”
A diverse and experienced leadership team
Attempting to pull off this cutting-edge vision at SV Sports is a new leadership team.
Lutz previously grew Sneaker Villa from two family-run stores in Reading into popular footwear and lifestyle retailer, VILLA, which today has more than 120 locations in 10 states. He sold a majority stake in VILLA in 2017, joining SV Sports late last year.
From there, Lutz recruited John Scipio as his partner and CEO of the company. Scipio spent 25 years at Nike as a regional team sales rep before moving into the Oregon-headquartered corporation’s specialty division.
Greene, another Nike veteran of more than two decades and responsible for overseeing its business in the Eastern region, has joined the ownership group as well.
Scipio and Greene, both Black men, make SV Sports one of the few major minority-owned sporting goods companies in the U.S. — life experience they believe can help inform the company’s approach to retail.
“I don’t just mean racial communities,” Greene said. “It’s all communities that are in geographical segments where retail left. The lifestyle mall pulled stuff from everywhere. Any place that’s been left, there are athletes left there that we want to serve and connect with.
“It does give us a different point of view that’s more than just the obvious, ‘Wow there’s a couple of Black guys over there.’ It will be a little more meaningful than that.”
A partner for schools and communities
While brick-and-mortar retail is largely in decline, the trio see many avenues to transforming SV Sports locations into hubs for local athletes and scholastic sports.
The tendency may be for big box chains such as Dick’s Sporting Goods to stand out as retail continues to consolidate, but those locations aren’t necessarily viable for all shoppers.
“We felt like not everybody can make it to a Dick’s in the lifestyle mall,” Greene said. “Even though that’s the trend, that’s not necessarily what consumers want.”
Greene also remarked that sales reps for those types of chains aren’t going to be much help inner-city schools when, for example, it comes to understanding how to prevent top student-athletes from transferring to programs with more resources.
“No one there is going to sit in the AD’s office and commiserate about how you keep a student,” Greene said. “We’ve all been there, and that’s what we do.
Lutz agreed, adding being a smaller, more nimble company provides SV Sports more flexibility to work with those schools.
“There’s a real opportunity to have us come to town and how we think through that partnership, how we work with them,” Lutz said. “How do we make sure when their teams are competing, they’re almost intimidating others just because they have the coolest products, the coolest uniforms, the coolest stuff.
“It becomes a competitive advantage for them and their coaching staff and school to keep kids there. And those are challenges every inner-city high school is facing around the country.”
SV Sports will make gradual return
Lutz conceded that while SV Sports would like to reopen a store in the tri-county region in the near future, nothing is imminent.
In addition to remodels in Quakertown and at Spooky Nook Sports, the largest indoor sports complex in North America, an SV Sports is slated to arrive at another sports complex coming to Cincinnati in 2022.
The Cincinnati complex will replace Spooky Nook as the largest, painting a clear picture of the retailer’s approach.
“Where the athletes are, that’s where we want to be,” Lutz said.
While brick and mortar retail is not without its challenges, those types of facilities attract thousands of athletes and families every week.
And, the reality is, there are some products people still prefer to see before they buy.
“Especially when you’re selling cleats and balls and bats, people want to touch and feel them,” Lutz said.
Greene noted that strengthening the digital store is still key to building that connection with the consumer, as well as giving the retail venues a cultural connective tissue that will make SV Sports a destination.
Easier said than done, maybe. Yet, with a diverse leadership team, an innovative model and SV’s 50-year history in the business as a building block, there’s a lot working in their favor.
“We’re lucky enough that this is what we have set before us and can do it,” Greene said. “Not everybody can do it this way, but we can — and hopefully it will work.”