Al: The Man Behind the Sport Shop

As a cost analyst, was good with numbers.

So one day he decided something didn’t add up.

“I guess I figured out working for other people wasn’t my thing,” he says with a smile.

Still, he wasn’t quite sure what path to take until he took a trip to his hometown in Washington state.

There was a sporting goods store there that triggered pleasant memories.

“I remember distinctly the smell of the wool hats and the leather gloves,” he says, which flipped on a mental light switch. Why not open a sporting goods store?

After careful research and number crunching, he determined the San Diego area would be a good fit. So he and his wife, Mary, moved their family from Santa Barbara – where he worked at Raytheon – when he landed a job at General Dynamics in San Diego.

A year later, Treadwell quit and opened in Santee.

The year was 1979, and Al’s – now located in a two-story building at the corner of Mission Gorge and Carlton Hills Boulevard  -- is an east county institution, a place where youth teams, high school athletes and weekend warriors have been coming for more than 30 years.

Al’s has rolled with the punches, evolving through changes in business climate while surviving a fire, an eviction and a bad economy.

But one thing hasn’t changed.

Al still loves the gloves that snared him in the first place.

“I love their smell,” he says. “My favorite thing is gloves; touching them, feeling them, smelling them.

“There’s not much wool anymore, though.”

“Be flexible”

Today, there’s a lot more than baseball gloves in Al’s Sport Shop. The business has diversified, and the shop offers not only sports equipment, clothes and lettermen’s jackets, but trophies, engraving services, banners, signs, business cards and photo treatments.

The Al’s of 2011 is much changed from the Al’s of 1979. Not only has Santee grown – he remembers seeing trotting past his store back then – but he and his staff have had to adapt.

“You’ve got to diversify,” says Treadwell, 63. “Be flexible or be dead.”

When a moved in and began selling sporting goods, Al’s countered by offering trophies and engraving, things the big store didn’t do.

Treadwell attributes his store’s longevity to a combination of factors, including his business acumen. As a cost analyst, he knew how to watch his pennies and make smart choices. In the long run, he says that was more important than knowing about softballs and baseball bats.

While he admits he was a novice about the business he had chosen – “Honestly, I knew nothing about sporting goods,” he says – he knew about business.

So, while the vast majority of businesses before their first year, Treadwell’s is still standing 32 years later. On many days, you can still find him behind the counter.

He has (including part-timers) and customers who are the grandchildren of his first customers in the ’70s.

Even now, he says the constant need for growth and adaptation is what he loves best about his job.

 “It’s the challenge of making a business work in today’s environment,” he says. “To be in business today, you have to be one step ahead.”

So, he’s embraced the Web, Facebook and social media (with the help of a grandson, who’s studied marketing). When kids come in to buy their lettermen’s jackets – and they come from about 70 high schools across the county – their photos are posted on the store’s Facebook page. And, he continues to look for new ways to connect with customers.

Last week, as he sat at his desk reflecting on his career audible – leaving a comfortable career to go to work for himself – he said he has no regrets.

 “Oh heavens, yes,” he says, when asked if it was the right choice. “I’ve really enjoyed this.”

That doesn’t mean there haven’t been trying times, though.

The current recession has been challenging, as has been the influx of competing chain stores.

The worst time came in the late 1990s. The store was located several blocks east of its current location, near Mission Gorge and Olive Lane, near the current store in the Plaza de Cuyamaca Shopping Center. A fire in 1998 damaged the store, and it had to be moved into a vacant building nearby. Then, in 2001, Al was notified he was being evicted. His business was no longer wanted there.

“At the time it was crushing,” he says. “But the fire and eviction were the two best things to ever happen.”

The events forced him to find a new home, and he found his current spot almost immediately. And, at 6,000 square feet, it’s almost twice as large as his last store.

Flying high

Aside from the shop and his family – he and his wife have three grown children and four grandchildren – Treadwell’s passion is flying.

He has his pilot’s license and a Cessna T210 parked at .

More than 20 years ago, an uncle took him on a flight over the mountains on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. On a beautiful, sunny day, Treadwell was hooked.  When he returned to San Diego, he immediately signed up for flight lessons.

Now he flies whenever he can. Just recently, he and his grandson flew up to San Francisco on a Saturday morning, did some work and visited family and were home by Sunday evening. A perfect getaway.

As retirement nears, Treadwell is pondering his own getaway. He’s not yet certain when he’ll retire and start sniffing the roses – maybe a couple of years – but when he does, he’ll hand over the business to a nephew.

Until then, the smell of those baseball gloves will do just fine.