Going on your own

[CoreSoftball20]

Uniforms are a very good money maker if you can do them yourself. Subleting out is a risk.

I will say, opening a strictly on line store is fine, but if you are looking to sell equipment, most manufacturers require a brick and mortar location. They already have many website sales stores and dont look for anymore. One of the first questions is, "do you have a storefront?"

 

[RetiredCoach]

Those brick and mortar stores are still very important today. We all need a place to checkout and try on equipment before we go online to get the best price!

 

[CJ D]

Uniforms, and discounts to the teams purchasing uniforms through your store. Nothing ridiculous. 5-10%...basically saving sales tax.

Socks...lots of colors and sizes. One thing that is crazy here is finding socks. Kids will go through a few pair a season it seems. They'll buy other stuff when buying socks.

Same for belts. Lots of different colors.

My biggest gripe local...including academy and other large stores...I can't buy buckets of leather softballs. I can buy buckets if synthetic balls all day. But not leather.

Offer customized balls with team logo. Really starting to take off here. But we have to order online. Hard to find good gloves around here. Only store that will steam them is Dicks. Offer that service.

Most of this pertains to softball. Plenty of stores around carry tons of baseball stuff. Very, very few have large selections of softball items.