St. John Sports changes store name and location
The new St. John Sports location, now called Mike’s Sporting Goods, features more space for fitting purposes for customers. The original location was unable to display a variety of equipment, while the new one will have more merchandise to choose from.
November 4, 2013
People of the Lake Central community frequent the little brick building behind Aspen Cafe in St. John known as St. John Sports – the local retailer for school spirit wear, letterman jackets and other athletic gear.
As of Monday, Oct. 28, the store has changed its name to Mike’s Sporting Goods, as well as its location, to the strip mall across from Walmart in Schererville, near the Route 30 and 41 intersection.
“It’s a great location. We’ve got St. John next door, Dyer next door, Munster next door, Highland next door, Griffith and even Merrillville. [The old location] was back off the road and you had to drive through a mud hole to get there. We were 85 percent team orders, so it didn’t bother us a whole lot, but we want to do better in retail. We’ve brought not just our spirit wear, and of course we have our letterman jackets and phys. ed uniforms, but we’ve got a 100-foot wall of equipment now,” John Collet, Owner, said.
The new store contains more shelving and rack space for merchandise, as well as an upstairs conference room to facilitate sport teams’ signups, like town baseball and softball leagues. Above all else, the location change was an economic must.
“The economy’s been pretty tough over the past four years. If we’re going to survive, we have to cut the costs. We were in St. John and we were in Merrillville, so there were a lot of things to do going back and forth every day. To get everybody in one location, the efficiencies are going to be enormous,” Collet said.
St. John Sports agreed to combine business with the original Mike’s Sporting Goods in Merrillville into one Schererville location, as well as to adopt that stores’ name. Management did not want the business to be titled with “St. John” in a different town.
“As we filter through the [athletic] seasons, people find us, but I really think we’re going to get a nice bounce from all the communities that surround us,” Collet said.
Mike’s Sporting Goods is open Monday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Saturdays from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
