Walk into a Galyan’s Sports and Outdoor Adventure store for the first time and you’re likely to step back outside and look at the sign above the door.
This is not your father’s sporting goods store. This is Nordstrom meets the Gravity Games.
There are the neatly piled stacks of the latest fashions from adidas, Reebok and Nike and racks of tops and jackets sporting other famous brands. But then you catch sight of the board shop, where the walls are festooned with neon-colored skateboards and wakeboards. In the outdoors area, half a dozen canoes and kayaks appear to drift above shoppers. And then there is the climbing wall — all 46 feet of it — soaring toward the ceiling.
"It’s a dramatic, engaging experience," says Robert Mang, chairman and CEO of the Plainfield-based retailer which has stores in 19 states, from Nevada to New Jersey. "The only con is that it can be a little intimidating to some people. Some consumers like to be able to see everything from the front door, and that’s just not possible with the size of our stores."
Galyan’s 43 stores stock products for more than 150 sports and outdoor activities — in addition to run-of-the-mill athletic apparel — in their 80,000 to 100,000 square feet of space. There are 15 specialty shops with 40 departments in the typical store, and each store generates an average of $20.5 million in sales each year, compared with $9.4 million at competitor Dick’s Sporting Goods.
But the sluggish economy and uncooperative weather have been a drag on profits of late. After earning $18.7 million on sales of nearly $598 million in fiscal 2002, ended Feb. 1, 2003, the company has posted losses in each of the last two quarters due to higher occupancy costs and increased depreciation expenses.
If Galyan’s is to continue its remarkable growth rate — based largely on new store openings — it needs to keep customers coming back. For Mang, that has meant rethinking store design, adding a low-price guarantee and even changing the company’s name.
