The History of Tidewater Sports

by Sandy Everett, CEO of TSC

Tidewater Sports & Collectibles was born out of a passion to collect and find sports beanies during the Beanie Babie craze of the late 1990's.  My sister, LeAnn, got me involved in helping her collect Ty Beanies.  Now, I know you might think it is weird for a dude to collect beanies, but I am one of those types with a "collecting" personality, so it was easy for me to get sucked into the hysteria.

Anyway, at one of our stops one day I saw for the first time the Salvino's Bamm Beano beanie bear (later named Bammers) for Major League Baseball player Ken Griffey, Jr.  I thought that it was really cool, and ended up buying it.  I started doing a little research and found out that there were already two sets of the bears out (the first "Gold" set and the second set called the "Summer" set).  I contacted Salvino's and using my business license from National Roofing Corporation (my father's business that has been around for over 35 years and of which I am currently Treasurer and manager of the day-to-day operations of the office) bought a case of Bammers and a case of Christmas themed bears from Limited Treasures.

My lovely wife, Raelee, and I took these bears out to Bill's Flea Market in Virginia Beach on a cold, cold day in February of 1999 and started selling our sports and "other brands" of beanies right next to the Ty dealers, outside on the patio where you can rent a table all day for $10.00.  It was really just a way for me to get rid of the extra sets in each case so that I could collect the sets myself.  I really never thought that we would go into business.  To our surprise, they were a hit, and since no one else was selling these particular beanies, we had found our niche in the beanie market.  We showed up every Saturday and Sunday at Bill's and started to get regular customers and the word of mouth spread like wildfire.  Many of the beanie magazines of the time would feature these off-brand beanies, but no one could ever find them.... until we showed up!!

As the business grew and grew, we started doing the beanie and trading card show circuit as well as our table at Bill's.  As our inventory grew to include more and more brands like Collecticritters, Grateful Dead bears, Planet Plush, etc., we outgrew our table (and small Aerostar van we used to transport the product every weekend), and decided to open a small permanent store inside Bill's Flea Market.  We were open everyday, and we had started a nice little side business.

Finally, I had the idea that we should open a store in a local mall to test the waters and see if we could make it work outside of the collector's shows and flea market.  A small pet store inside Chesapeake Square Mall was vacant, and the management decided to rent it out to us.  We had a LOT of work to do to get the place ready for use, but we did it!!!  The pet store had literally vacated in the middle of the night, the day before declaring bankruptcy.  They left product and dead animals behind.  It was a nasty, nasty mess.  But we cleaned it up, brought in our stuff, found some display gondolas that were being thrown away by Sears, and opened up on October 1, 1999.  The journey had begun....

We opened the store, and in preparation for the opening, we added several new product lines including NASCAR die-cast, coffee mugs, and sports cards.  We also added a limited number of fan product pieces, but for the most part, our inventory consisted of sports and off-brand beanies.  The Christmas season of '99 was a roaring success!!!  We were literally besides ourselves.  Shortly after New Year's of 2000, we closed down the store at Bill's and concentrated our efforts on improving our store at Chesapeake Square.  Raelee did a lot of research into new companies and new products, and slowly over the first year in the mall, we added tons of new products to appeal to more than just the beanie collector.

We slowly added the bobbleheads, flags, clocks, keychains, glassware, coasters, stepping stones, rugs, autographed collectibles, pinwheels, race-used tires, etc., that we carry today.  It was a long process, but we had decided that we wanted to be unique and not like any other store in the area.  Too many of today's sports collectible stores carry the exact same thing as the next guy, and don't offer customers a truly unique product.  That is where we step in.  The other complaint of many of the sports stores in the area is the fact that they don't carry a large selection of teams.  We try to carry as many teams as possible to cater to our diverse area of fans.  Since Hampton Roads is largely military based, people come from all over the country to live in our area for short (or long) periods of time.  But when they move here, they don't lose their allegiance to their favorite teams.  Again, this is where we step in and try to fill a void in the market.

In the winter of 2003, my wife and I began discussing the possibility of opening a second store.  We missed having a presence at the beach (albeit a small one while at Bill's Flea Market), and many of our loyal customers were driving for 30 minutes of more to reach us at Chesapeake Square.  Plus, we were starting to outgrow our small 1200 square foot store.  Our backroom was also bursting with extra product.  We had starting selling our overflow with much success on E-bay and Yahoo Auctions during 2002.  But we still had enough excess inventory (due to minimum ordering requirements with many of our wholesalers and manufacturers) to open 2 or 3 stores!!

After doing some research and contacting local malls, we were able to secure space at MacArthur Center Mall in Norfolk.  It is centrally located in the area, and gave our Norfolk/Virginia Beach customers a much easier access to our store.  We opened our MacArthur store on May 15, 2003 to much fanfare.  ESPN Radio 1310 did a live broadcast there and New Orleans Saints Quarterback Aaron Brooks was there to sign autographs.  After some initial bumps in the road, the MacArthur store quickly grew and began to outsell our established Chesapeake Square store.  It has provided an eye-opening experience for us, and allowed us to create a successful model and blueprint for opening future stores.

Now that we had two successful and busy stores, plus an online business that was shipping anywhere from 20 to 50 packages a day, we needed a centralized warehouse to do shipping and to have one place to store any excess inventories.  In January of 2004, we opened our warehouse facilities to handle just that.  With over 2,000 square feet of raw warehouse space, we are able to better serve our Internet and Auction Customers, as well as keep our stores properly stocked.  It also allows Roberta to be able to keep up on inventory much easier than before, when we kept 1/2 of our inventory in Chesapeake Square's backroom, and the other 1/2 in MacArthur's backroom.  It was very confusing, and required almost constant communication between the stores to try to ensure that all products are on the shelf all the time at both locations.

In June of 2004, we moved our MacArthur location upstairs to our permanent location next to Nordstroms.  The new location is beautiful, and the exterior of the store gave us the blueprint for all future stores.  The unique thing we did with this location is the "autograph room".  There is a small section of the store that is filled from top to bottom with autographs and almost has the feel of a museum.  Many of our customers come in time and time again just to wander in that section of the store and check out all the cool autographed items.  But unlike a museum, everything in that room is definitely for sale!!!

In 2004, we started a gradual, but major shift in our business model for Tidewater Sports.  The initial success we had with signings for Aaron Brooks, Ric Flair and others made us realize that there was a huge untapped market in Hampton Roads for autograph events.  Slowly over the course of 2004, we began to increase the frequency of our autograph events.  By the end of 2004, we had brought in sports and wrestling stars like Dale Murphy, Kurt Angle, Ken Harvey, Rob Van Dam, and Kevin Greene.   Now, besides being known for sports collectibles, fan product, and the like, we were fast becoming known as the place where your favorite sports or wrestling star might be appearing.  For me personally, the greatest thing about our appearances is watching the looks on the dedicated fans when they get a chance to meet one of their favorite athletes.  I would like to think that we have helped to make a lot of sports fans in Tidewater very happy!!

In October of 2004, we opened our third store inside Lynnhaven Mall.  The grand opening was held on October 30th and we featured a grand opening celebration with 4 former Redskins appearing for an autograph event.  Customers got to meet and hang out with Mark Moseley, Charley Taylor, Dave Butz, and Charles Mann.  It was an awesome day!!  Since then, Lynnhaven has become our "crown jewel" and is the model we will be using for any new stores that open in the future.  Freshie Reuter took over the store after being the Assistant Manager at MacArthur, and he has done a great job with his store.

2005 saw more growth in our autograph business as we founded a separate division of the company called TSC Authentics.  We were fast becoming known across the country in the autographed collectibles business, and our wholesaling and internet sales of autographed items from our events was becoming a large part of each event.  With TSC Authentics, we are able to create a brand name that, hopefully, will one day be on the level of Upper Deck, Steiner, Mounted Memories, and Tri-Star as a trusted and respected name in the autographed collectibles industry.

In August of 2005, we were able to secure a lease at Patrick Henry Mall in the new wing that was being constructed from the former Dillard's space.  After several delays and reconfigurations by the mall, we were finally able to start construction on the space in May of 2006.  We are hoping to have the space open before the end of June and plan on a huge grand opening celebration.

In 2008, Tidewater Sports announced that it was closing it's doors forever.  Chesapeake Square was closed first, then Patrick Henry, then MacArthur, and then finally Lynnhaven on Dec 31, 2008.  Tidewater Sports continues to operate on the web under the direction of a Bankruptcy Trustee as we continue to liquidate inventory to try and meet the debts to our creditors.

From the ashes of Tidewater Sports, TSC Authentics was born on June 1st, 2009.  TSC Authentics will continue to retail and wholesale autographed collectibles that were created during the many signings held at Tidewater Sports over the years.  So who knows where this future might lead??? So many times I have to remind myself to "never say never" and remain open to all the possibilities ahead.  Hopefully there will be more chapters to add to the Tidewater Sports/TSC Authentics story in the future....