Reflections on Planning Seasons in Advance

For those of you who've read enough of this blog, looked around our website or read some of my posts on the discussion boards, you know I'm pretty passionate about what we do.

But one thing I honestly hate about this business is the seasonal aspect of it. I am realistic enough to know it comes with the territory but oh how I wish we could simply sell the same number of Wilson platinum chest protectors, b/w basketball referee shirts or football referee knickers month after month. It would sure make things much easier for us from a planning perspective.

Inventory management is tough for any business. Buy too little, and you can't meet demand leaving your customers to go elsewhere. Buy too much, and experience all the negative aspects of cash flow issues. For a sporting goods company faced with multiple seasons during a year, whether it's one who caters to officials or to players, knowing how much of what to get and when to get it is quite the challenge.

The when to get it part of that equation typically starts 2 seasons in advance. For example, although we've been hot and heavy in the middle of baseball and softball (lacrosse, too), we've been behind the scenes planning ahead for 2008 football and basketball seasons. We'll also plan ahead for baseball 2009 during football season.

This planning normally includes making decisions on our product selection and placing purchase orders for what we can buy in bulk ahead of time.

If it were up to me, I'd rather complete a season, sell the last of every item for that sport, then start planning a week before the next season starts. I might even declare a 1-week moratorium on all officials' sporting goods sales worldwide for a little forced in-between seasons rest and relaxation.

Not practical...
I know...
But a kid can dream, can't he?!

Special note only to those considering opening your own officials sporting goods store, thus becoming potential competitors: Please re-read this article as many times as you'd like.

Spot-bilt Going Out of Business

When I think of long standing manufacturers of officials apparel, I think of items like:

• Wilson Protective Gear
• Sansabelt Referee Pants
• Fechheimer Umpire Pants
• and Spot-bilt Shoes

Perhaps you have certain other brands or items in mind as well.

Spot-bilt, a division of Saucony, has supplied us with shoes for all sports for much of our short existence. From patent leather basketball shoes to grid stud field shoes to low and mid-cut plate shoes, Spot-bilt has provided us with something like 12 shoe styles if you include both D and 2E wide widths.

Somewhere around last summer, the word from Spot-bilt was that they were purchased by Payless Shoes. Shortly thereafter, with each time we attempted to purchase shoes, we found fewer and fewer sizes available in-stock. Things got worse when the answer to "when will those unavailable sizes be available" was that there were none scheduled for production. None in production!? Did they not realize that basketball season was soon approaching and we needed patent leather shoes to resell?

To make a long story short, and many phone calls later, the company that bought Spot-bilt eventually decided earlier this year that making officials' shoes was not worth their time from a profit standpoint.

At that time, we made the only decision we could make in the short term which was to purchase as many shoes as we could afford - at least of what was remaining - to allow us time to transition to other suppliers (see New Balance and Pentagon)

For now, you'll find from us some of our Spot-bilt shoes with availability in most sizes. Others have only a few. With some of those, we elected to offer a closeout special to free up some needed shelf space. See those on our specials page.

Yet for others, such as plate shoes, Pentagon Sports is making identical shoes for us except for a difference in the logo. Consequently for plate shoes, some sizes have the Spot-bilt logo and some have the Pentagon one. Even then, Pentagon is out of many sizes in several styles for the year, too. Oh well, perhaps the title of this post should have been "Get Your Spot-bilt Shoes While You Can".

For later, you'll find a dwindling size selection of grid stud shoes and patent leather shoes. You'll also find that we'll completely switch over from Spot-bilt to Pentagon in the plate shoes arena.

An interesting footnote is that Pentagon is owned by Chip Strapp who is the same person that ran Spot-bilt before he was let go ahead of the Payless Shoes' decision to end Spot-bilt's existence.

So now you know the rest of the story regarding Spot-bilt.

New Balance Shoes Get Customers' Choice Seal

After 2 months, it's obvious how well-liked the New Balance plate and base shoes are. They each have become the best selling shoes in their categories. And comments on comfort, fit and ease of cleaning have been plentiful.

Therefore, we've added them to our customers' choice list for baseball and softball. Up until now, the only umpire shoes with this distinction have been the Spot-bilt low top plate shoes.

Although we started with D width only, we are adding plate shoes in 2E (on order for resell within about 2 weeks). 2E is available in the base shoes as a special order for now. 4E is available as a special order in both styles.

BLUE for Kids Auction: Story at MLB.com

Wanted to post a link to a nice article for the BLUE for Kids Charity Auction we helped promote:
Link to Article on MLB site

Also a photo gallery of the event below:
Flickr Photos

RELATED POSTS

• Feel Good, Small World Story Regarding BLUE for Kids Charity (3/20/08)
  
• Email Subscribers Eligible to Enter Free MLB Tickets Drawing (3/4/08)
  

Online Officiating Discussion Forums: A Few Thoughts

I'm a big fan of the discussion forums available online for umpires and referees. They're a great way for officials to gain knowledge and insights from each other in a way that could not have been accomplished prior to the Internet age.

For the industry as a whole, I think they have played at least a small part in developing the culture of the officiating industry as a professional activity at all levels.

FORUMS

ABUA (Amateur Baseball Umpire Association)
Categorized nicely by topic and level for umpires and has a category specifically for umpire equipment (my favorite). I post occasionally here with the latest being on lightweight masks. I'm impressed by the level of knowledge many of the umpires who post here have. I have learned a great deal myself from simply reading posts over the last 3 or 4 years.

Officiating.com
Categorized by sport, it historically has been the more congenial of the bunch. Because of the multiple sports, it's the largest in volume of information and is a one-stop-shop for those who do more than 1 sport.

The Umpire Life (new and closed)
Developed by Minor League Umpire and MLB fill-in umpire Rob Drake. The site was widely applauded as it uniquely showed what life was like for an umpire at that level through a blog and discussion forum where questions from non-MLB umpires could be answered by Rob.

However, due to concerns from Major League Baseball, the site has been shut down (why it was shut down is an interesting topic worthy of fleshing out in another post).

Umpire-Empire
Developed by an umpire with the intention of an umpire only site with well-written articles, equipment reviews, suppliers reviews and a discussion board organized by topic.

GOOD MODERATORS ARE KEY TO GOOD DISCUSSION BOARDS

What I've noticed is that Rob's forum and the one at Umpire-Empire have been flawlessly moderated.

A good moderator is one who posts in a positive manner, encourages discussion - often times starting posts, and tactfully arbitrates when there are disagreements without taking sides. In other words, the moderator sets the tone and serves as the model for how others should follow.

What are your experiences with the above sites or boards? Know any others out there I've missed?