Sport Seasons discounting W. Knoxville store contents as it readies to close – Knoxville News Sentinel

Sport Seasons discounting W. Knoxville store contents as it readies to close  Knoxville News Sentinel

 Nashville-based Sport Seasons will close its Knoxville location at the end of May, said owner Doug Beam, who acknowledged that the sports apparel store has been losing money.

The store has been located at 7240 Kingston Pike #160 in Knoxville for 14 years.

“I would say it’s devastating,” said Beam, whose family is from Knoxville.

Sport Seasons sells a variety of athletic apparel, footwear and team gear, including Vols merchandise, according to its website.

Beam, a longtime Nashville resident, said everything in the store is listed at reduced prices, with 20-70% markdowns as it tries to get rid off its inventory.

More: Another Knoxville Center Mall store is closing

“We’re not holding anything back right now,” he said.

Sport Seasons’ lease at its Knoxville location is up soon, which also factored into Beam’s decision to close

The store, which has been staffed by two full-time and two part-time employees, previously operated a store at West Town Mall for 10 years and and also had a store in East Town Mall, which closed about three years ago.

It does not have any other Knoxville-area locations but operates two stores in Nashville, one in Franklin and one in Murfreesboro, Beam said.

Beam does not have any plans to open another store in Knoxville in the future but is keeping an open mind.

He points to the shifting retail landscape as a main driver behind his store’s struggles to make money.

More: Three stores are leaving Knoxville Center Mall

The explosion of online shopping, particularly with online retail giant Amazon, and the decline in shopping at brick-and-mortar stores has impacted sales for Sport Seasons, Beam said.

“Even though our online business has been growing through the years, it doesn’t even come close to offsetting the loss of in-store sales,” Beam said.

Amazon is one of the main forces behind the loss of in-store sales, Beam said, though he added that manufacturers have also challenged sales with their online presence.

More: University Commons Walmart running store closing sale on merchandise

Twenty years ago, Sport Seasons didn’t have to compete with the online sales of brands like Nike and Adidas at the level it has to now.

“Increasingly,” Beam said, “we’ve had to compete with the very people that we buy product from.”

Suppliers have also segmented Sport Seasons out of certain products and have cut back considerably on discounts they would offer the sporting apparel store, Beam said.

Retail consolidation has also affected Sport Seasons, Beam said.

The owner isn’t ruling out opening up another store in Knoxville, noting that real estate costs have gotten really expensive but that he anticipates real estate prices improving in the next few years.

“You never know,” Beam said. “We might be back up here in two, three years. You never can tell.”

Published 1:21 PM EDT May 14, 2019