On Black Friday 2013, Shibe Sports opened its doors for the first time, selling the products the previous owner had in a prior store, including Florida Marlins hats, WHA jerseys, and a bizarre black shirt that just said "fantasy football" on the front in sequins. We had a staff of one, plus ourselves. Neither of us had any previous experience in retail.
Soon after, we reached out to my buddy Jon Billett, who had done a bunch of design work I liked at Sidecar bar. He started doing some designs for us, then turned us on to Keni Thomas soon thereafter. Keni's been designing shirts for the store ever since. A Sidecar bartender, Alex Ciambriello, came up one day and told us he was starting a screenprinting business. We teamed up, and he would make our shirts for the next eight years in a garage next door to a punk rock coffee shop in South Philly.
We didn't really make much money those first years, though we were having a lot of fun. That was the Chip Kelly era, the Phillies were nosediving, and the Sixers were 10-72. Tough time to open a sports store! But it forced us to be creative, forced us to take some chances, forced us to roll the dice on quirky things like Philadelphia A's hats and Philadelphia Bell t-shirts. And by being a bit different, people started to take notice.
Then the Eagles won the Super Bowl. That was a crazy time, and we actually reached a point where we could afford to hire a manager. An old buddy of Johnny's, Darren, just so happened to be moving back to the city after a few years away. He'd always worked in the bar and restaurant business, but had no retail experience. Well neither had we, so why not give him a shot? And for the past 5+ years, Darren has been an absolute rock star in the store. He's also hired a staff of awesome people who work hard and are fun to hang out with. It's awesome to go into the store when you like the people you're working with, and we've got a terrific staff.
We're in every sense of the word a small, community-based business. We've got a great relationship with the Anderson Monarchs baseball program, and have raised tens of thousands for them over the years. We work with Philly Express in South Philly on a lot of our shirts, and with KCB Printing in the suburbs for many of the rest. Many of our products are made locally, we're two local guys, and from our video producer Kyle to our photographer Marissa to our artists Keni and Scott to our brand ambassador Reef...we're all local. We've fought some, laughed a lot, cheered on the local teams, hung out with you guys at tailgates and said "Go Birds" millions of times. It never gets old. We're not just dudes selling t-shirts. We're local sports fans who love selling ya cool gear when the local teams are looking good and are there to commiserate when the local crew can't finish the job.
And we've got an awesome collection of customers. For that, we want to say thank you. Whether you've shopped with us for 10 years or today for the first time, it's really cool of you to support local business, and we really do appreciate it. It's been a crazy ten year ride, and it's all thanks to you all that we get to continue it into another decade. Thank you and Go Birds!
- Johnny and Brian
P.S. We've extended our Black Friday sale to today - save 20% off everything with the code: blackfriday
