Joined: Thu May 28, 2009 11:10 am
Posts: 42094
Location: Rock Ridge (splendid!)
pizza_Place: Charlie Fox's / Paisano's
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bigfan wrote: Took me 10 years to stop saying Morry Mages
Then another ten to stop saying SPORTMART
Just getting around to the SportsAuthority....
DICKS!
Never been Morrie Mages Selling Stores To Michigan Chain
June 17, 1987|By Janet Key.
Morrie Mages Sports, which operates three stores in the Chicago area, "is about to be sold" to Grand Rapids, Mich.-based MC Sporting Goods, founder Morrie Mages said Tuesday.
The deal with MC, a unit of Los Angeles-based Pacific Lighting Corp., which operates 36 sporting goods stores in the Midwest, is expected to be completed by the end of the month, Mages said. No price tag was put on the deal.
MC, which operates four stores in the Chicago area, will acquire the eight-floor Mages flagship store at 620 N. LaSalle St. as well as smaller units in Arlington Heights and Woodridge. Mages said the Grand Rapids retailer hopes to add 8 to 10 stores in this area, and ``maybe (expand) in the South.``
MC President Ed Finkelstein couldn`t be reached for comment.
``I`m not tired. I`m not that old. I`m aggressive and alive, and I love this business,`` said the 71-year-old Mages. ``But in order to get bigger, you got to have more money behind you, and I ain`t got it.``
Mages refuses to discuss the figures, but industry sources estimate that his operation brings in more than $20 million a year.
The colorful Mages, dubbed ``Chicago`s Mr. Sporting Goods,`` says he will stay on as chairman with the new owners ``for a couple of years.`` But Mages said he isn`t sure whether his son, Laurence, a lawyer and accountant who is the firm`s president, will stay.
``I`ve been thinking about selling for the last six months--somebody must`ve read my mind,`` said Mages, who still handles all buying and merchandising for the stores. Mages said he recently turned down offers from Peoria-based Brown`s Sporting Goods and from Sportmart.
Mages is one of few surviving Chicago merchants who started his career on Maxwell Street, the city`s Old World-style bazaar on the Near South Side, hawking bargains from a pushcart in front of his Russian immigrant father`s sporting goods store. He became a partner in the business with his father and brother in 1938.
Having sold the 14-store Mages Sporting Goods Co. in 1960, the millionaire Mages embarked on a series of bad investments that left him ``with 40 cents in my pocket,`` he recalled.
Undaunted, Mages returned to Maxwell Street, hawking bargain sporting goods on Sundays until he began grossing $400 to $500 a day.
At that point, he opened a store, first on Chicago Ave. in 1968 and then at his present location on LaSalle Street.
But Mages` buying remains the same--a combination of low-cost irregular, leftover and ``going out of business`` merchandise; regular purchases from manufacturers; and ``bootleg`` purchases of goods supposedly sold only to pro shops.http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-06-17/business/8702140873_1_stores-mc-sporting-goods-chicago-area
_________________
Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George
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