Tony Reid offers his weekly dose of happenings inside Sports Zone, the Central Pennsylvania shop where he works.
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Although I was off last Sunday, the shop and the hobby was definitely on my mind.
Being based in Pennsylvania, we’re very much in tune with the Steelers, especially the quarterback situation. The fact that Mike Tomlin finally called on number 8 could be very good news for us locally and for this year’s lackluster rookie crop that’s been a bit of a concern for shops and dealers that deal in current rookie cards.
If now starting quarterback Kenny Pickett can perform at a reasonably high level, that will be great news for the hobby that’s thirsting for high profile rookies this year… and should be very good locally here in Central PA. There are rabid, and when I say rabid, I mean rabid, “Stillers” fans all around us.
It will also be great for my household. I’m a Bears fan but my wife is a huge Steelers fan, so that will go a long way for me personally.
I definitely had a case of the Mondays this week.
Due to vacations, scheduling issues and other obligations, I was alone in the shop to start the week.
As anyone who reads this column knows, we are never short on orders when we walk in the door Monday thanks to the popularity of our online shops on eBay and Amazon. I had well over 200 orders that I processed by myself before I had our employee Matt arrive around 11AM.
It was right about that time that we got the 30 plus large boxes that UPS dropped off at our back door.
Many of those consisted of the always fun 500 small RC car parts to process, label and ship back to Amazon. As I’ve mentioned before, we’re a true “hobby” shop, selling much more than just sports cards. I also was lucky enough to get a skid of another product that I processed and sent back for FBA purposes.
My Monday help was here for an hour or two, so I was pretty much a one man gang. In those instances, as I’ve learned over the years whether it be here at the shop or another retail or management experiences, sometimes you just have to put out the biggest fires and go from there. Of course, our awaiting orders were top priority as we could get to the other stuff later. After I ran through our online orders I processed the skid of freight and I got through a few of the boxes from UPS but there was no way around the fact that some of that was going to wait till Tuesday morning when I had some help. All of this while answering phones, dealing with customers and all of the other little things that go with operating a shop.
Thankfully the rest of the week was a little bit lighter as far as deliveries and merchandise coming in. I did have more help Tuesday through Saturday so that was a pleasant sight and much appreciated.
We had enough help Friday that I managed to get to my son’s football game Friday night in Chambersburg. I was once again an incredibly proud papa as my son went a long way and carrying the team to a last second, nail biting victory. The postgame photo routine was a happy occasion.
We did see the new 2022 Score Football H2 edition rush into the store this week. We sold a number of boxes the first day we got them in.
Overall, traffic was down in the store a bit this week, which is a bit concerning. In fairness, it was the first week where it started really getting cold outside and the weather really turned more towards fall than summer.
Overall heading into the 4th quarter we’re bracing ourselves for what will hopefully be a busy holiday season in store and online.
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