UFA Co-operative Ltd., the Canadian firm that acquired 15 Sportsman's Warehouse stores last year, bought the domain names for JoesSports.com and GIJoes.com in bankruptcy court two months ago and has quietly been operating the joessports.com e-commerce site.
In an interview with Sports Executive Weekly, Natalie Dawes, spokeswoman for UFA, said the company essentially took over the contract that Joe's Sports had with GSI Commerce, which owns the merchandise and continues to handle fulfillment for the website. She said the deal allowed the e-commerce website to continue to operate through the bankruptcy and after the liquidation.
UFA bought the 15 Sportsman's Warehouse stores in March and rebranded them to Wholesale Sports in June. It also operates nine Wholesale Sports locations in Canada. Joe's Sports filed for bankruptcy protection in March and moved to liquidate in April.
Dawes said UFA plans to launch a Wholesale Sports website in the U.S. in early 2010. “We don't have a Web presence for our Wholesale Sports stores and Joe's Sports allows us to have one until we do,” said Dawes.
Dawes added that the acquisition of the Sportsman's Warehouse locations continues to go well. The merchandise mix hasn't changed since it closely matched the mix at Warehouse Sports' Canadian stores, and much of the staff has remained.
“We're really excited to have the 15 stores we do have and generally, we're doing well,” said Dawes. “We're pleased with the performance. As you can imagine, there were a lot of transition issues and those have been smoothed out. They're getting to know each other and it's working out well now.”
The company also acquired the Joe's Sports name but it has no plans to rename any Wholesale Sports locations to Joe's or to open any stores under that name.
