Craig Levra got into the sporting goods business as a college student — selling shirts, sweaters and jackets featuring University of Kansas football team logos out of the trunk of his Oldsmobile 442. Now Levra is the chairman and CEO of Sport Chalet, the La Cañada-based sporting goods company with a market value of about $28.4 million, and 55 stores in California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah, as well as a national sales presence on its Web site. Sport Chalet has thrived and struggled under Levra’s watch. The company has opened 25 stores over the last six years. But it also has had difficulty coping with the economic downturn, which stifled other store growth plans, Levra said. That has forced Sport Chalet to turn to new tactics, such as renegotiating rents and rethinking store locations, improving inventory management, increasing its online presence and better tracking customer demographics. In June, Sport Chalet announced that its fourth quarter was the company’s first profitable quarter following 13 consecutive quarters of losses. For the quarter that ended April 3, the company had net income of $0.3 million, or $0.02 per diluted share, on revenues of $98.2 million. For the same period the previous year, the company had a loss of $0.3 million, or $0.02 per diluted share, on revenues of $90.2 million. Question: How did you get started in the sporting goods retail industry? Answer: I was a manager for the football team — student manager — for the (University of Kansas). I would have rather played, but I was really awful. We traveled around to different road games. We’d have time before the games to go to the college bookstores. So we said, ‘We could start our own line of clothing and embroider Kansas football logos on it and sell it.’ I got a (business) partner, and a year after we started, I bought him out. So we did that, and I had an Oldsmobile 442. It’s an old one, but it had a great, big trunk, so it worked really well. I would sell sweaters and shirts and jackets, really nice quality stuff, out of the trunk of my car. Larry Brown was our basketball coach at the time, and he started buying product. Title: Craig Levra Age: 52 Education: bachelor’s degree in liberal arts and sciences and MBA from the University of Kansas Career history: worked for several sports retail startups; was the equipment manager for the United States Football League’s Los Angeles Express team; worked for Sports Authority from 1992 to 1997, held multiple positions; joined Sport Chalet in 1997 as president and chief operating officer, became CEO in 1999, became chairman of the company’s board of directors in 2001. Most Admired: Founders Norbert and Irene Olberz who sacrificed a lot to start their business Career Turning Point: Meeting the founders Personal: Married, with 17-year-old twins Q: Did anything else push you toward the industry? A: My dad was a football coach, so I grew up around football. He coached all over. He coached every sport in (a Kansas high school). He coached basketball and track and football and baseball. He was fortunate to work his way up and retired from the NFL about seven years ago now, (or) six years ago. Q: Did you play sports as a kid? A: High school football. I was too short and too slow. I ran a little bit of track, but actually I was so skinny that the coaches didn’t want me to run track. They didn’t want me to lose any more weight because I was getting pushed around the football field pretty badly. High school sports have changed so much. When I went to school … the people you looked up to from an athletic side were the four-sport letterman, so the individuals that played baseball and ran track in the spring and played football in the fall and basketball in the winter. Today that has all changed. It’s unfortunate where you’re in 8th, 9th, 10th grade, (and) you’re picking a sport and that’s your sport for virtually 12 months of the year. So, when you walk into Sport Chalet, you’ll see all these year-round training products. Personally, I don’t think it’s a healthy thing. If you ask the heads of most of our major vendors (and) manufacturers, they don’t necessarily agree with it either. That’s just the way of the world today, so you have to adjust to it and go forward. Q: What’s your favorite sport? A: My new favorite sport is ice climbing. Q: Why? A: I got invited to go last year on a product demo day where the climbing vendors get together and host shop employees from around the west to go vertical ice climbing. On a whim, I did it and I enjoyed it and I’ve been twice since. Stand up paddle boarding’s probably number two. We just started doing that sport, and that’s an unbelievably great activity, lake or surf. I’m not real good at it, but I really enjoy it. Q: Before joining Sport Chalet, you were an executive at Sports Authority and also worked at several other sporting goods startups. Does that give you a unique perspective? A: What was interesting is when I was working for All-American Sports Club … I would come on Sundays usually and visit the La Cañada Sport Chalet or the Huntington Beach Sport Chalet. Sport Chalet always had the coolest gear, the best customer service. We weren’t quite there yet. We were a startup company, so we were trying to grow. And then Sports Authority did the same thing. Q: Does Sport Chalet scope out other stores, too? A: We try to be great students of retail. It’s all about learning … and it doesn’t have to be in sports. We spend a tremendous amount of time with everybody in retail — the Apple iPod stores. What great concepts. We spend a tremendous amount of time in specialty shops. (Recently) I probably visited 20 specialty shops all around Lake Tahoe. We went to every bike shop, every paddleboard shop, every climbing shop, the resort shops (to see) who’s doing what, what can we learn, (and) what products do they have that we could sell. Q: Since you joined Sport Chalet in 1997, how has your role changed? A: It changes every day to some degree. It has to. We’re a public company and we take being a public company very seriously. We work hard to make sure we’re in full compliance of (the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002). How much time we’ve spent on our online business, that’s certainly changed from the end of 1997 to what we do today. I spend a portion of every day looking at what we’re doing, looking at what other Web sites are doing. But some things haven’t changed. We still have customer comment cards at the front of the store that our customers write and send in and either praise us or sometimes beat us up. I read every one of them personally before they get distributed. Q: What’s your advice to other businesses trying to choose the right location for a retail store? A: You can’t afford mistakes, and trust me I’ve made it. We’ve had a couple we should have never opened, and it’s 100 percent my fault. We have more data now then ever before to pick a site, which is great, and we’re pretty good at this. We visit the sites in the winter and in the summer, on a Sunday afternoon and Tuesday morning, right during a holiday weekend and during a transitional period like October when retail isn’t great for anybody. What’s going on in that shopping center?
The Sporting Life
