All City Sports stores shutting down

[PotomacCyclist]

Following on the heels of the Hudson Trail Outfitters shutdown, the entire City Sports chain will also shut down. At first they announced that they would only close about a third of their stores (incl. those in Georgetown, Rockville and Silver Spring, I believe). But they couldn’t work out a way to keep the rest of the company going, so all of the stores will close soon.

https://www.borderstan.com/2015/11/05/city-sports-to-shutter-all-26-locations-including-those-in-d-c/
http://www.boston.com/business/2015/11/04/bdc-city-sports-buyout/rCRul6MfMbKkCZn3gkfChK/story.html

City Sports only has a limited selection of bike gear such as helmets and tire pumps. They don’t sell bikes. But they do carry bike and triathlon shorts, jerseys, bike gloves, winter tights and various pullovers and jackets. They also have gels, energy bars, water bottles, headlamps and anti-chafing sticks.

The stores have clothing and equipment for other sports/activities like running, swimming, tennis, baseball, soccer and yoga.

The going-out-of-business sales are supposed to start tomorrow. If they follow the standard procedure, the discounts won’t be that great at first. They will offer larger discounts as they get closer to the final day of business.

[Crickey7]

There wasn’t much there I could use–for example, for some reason they stocked no Presta tubes at the store near me–but it’s still a shame.

[thucydides]

I don’t want to come across as celebrating people losing their jobs, but i had really awful experiences with their customer service. There’s a location nearish my office but I happily went out of my way to avoid them.

[PotomacCyclist]

I went on a couple of their group runs. Those were fun. Not too long and open to everyone. They also had a free membership discount program, which I used occasionally. Mostly for Clif bars and gels (back when I used gels).

Now it seems that a new ownership group wants to revive the brand. I think it could be a good idea, depending on whether they can make the business profitable. I found it convenient to have their stores in Gallery Place, downtown and elsewhere, even if they didn’t have much for cyclists. Their winter gear was useful for both runners and cyclists.

I hope they will consider opening up a store in the Pentagon City/Crystal City area. There’s a sizable market there and not a lot of options currently. Modell’s has some general training apparel but only a limited selection of bike items, if any at all. Sports Authority carries big-box store generic bikes and some cycling gear but they are located in Potomac Yard, Alexandria. It’s not too long a bike ride from PC/CC, but sometimes people go shopping when they aren’t riding, or when they don’t have the time for a longer detour.

A Pentagon City store could benefit from the large amount of shoppers at the mall and Pentagon Centre. Crystal City is located near the MVT and Long Bridge Park. Plus some people are working on bike projects at the TechShop makerspace on Crystal Drive. (I’ve seen bike frames and bikes in their bike room area, but since I was looking through the windows, I couldn’t see exactly what people were making or designing.)

The new group bought the brand, logo and website. They won’t have any of the debts, leases or other obligations of the bankrupt company.

Their website is running again. The contact address is in Eatontown, NJ. The old company was based in Boston. The individual webpages for some of the DC stores are still up, but maybe that just means the old company never got around to shutting those pages down.

A NY Post article (posted on the CS Facebook page) says they will reopen stores in urban areas in the Northeast U.S. That could include DC, which was one of the core markets for the old company. But they will avoid suburban locations because of higher costs.

http://nypost.com/2016/02/26/city-sports-comeback-plan-is-to-avoid-the-suburbs/

Would they consider Arlington suburban? Technically it’s a suburb, but the Metro corridors are urban in nature and basically a part of the close-in central DC market.

[Author]

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