The Rise and Fall of Ofischl Sports

The reason why I am telling this story is not to relive the past, but to learn from the (many) mistakes made with Ofischl Sports. By the time I was on NBC News, I had already made three costly mistakes that negatively impacted the business and only one good decision which was to bring in Screen Printing. The first costly mistake I made was when I incorporated the business and retained a family attorney, not a business attorney. We were a Subchapter S Corporation which has some great advantages, but there are requirements such as annual shareholder meetings that were never held. The Articles of Incorporation went untouched until 2002 when I was sued by my business partner and it cost thousands to have the books brought up to date. The lack of annual meetings with no minutes recorded was very costly for several reasons. Had there been annual meetings, one of the shareholders who is a business and financial genius would have seen the financials and known there was a problem (the retail was losing money). We should have gotten out of retail in 2001 when the Lease came up. Solution: We now have a business attorney who will represent LST. The next two mistakes came from not following the advice of a friend who owned a sporting goods store in the next town. He knew my father well and just before I opened the business, he advised me of two things – 1. Don’t try to donate or sponsor your way in to prosperity because it doesn’t work. If you make decent profits, then donating to lessen the profit taxes is worthwhile. I ignored his advice and he was correct. 2. Don’t fall in “love with the brick and mortar” which is exactly what I did. I so loved the retail environment where I talked to folks everyday and was part of the downtown community. I held on to the retail location for way too long and by the time I decided to move to a manufacturing location, it was too late. I do plan to make donations to specific organizations (Storyline, Bridgman Band, and Folds of Valor), but the funds will come from me and LST will take the credit. As for retail, LST will have a front “showroom” with product samples, but there won’t be retail hours. It will be by appointment only. The next colossal mistake I made was getting involved in City politics. Up until 2000, I had paid no attention to politics and rarely voted. One day, a community activist came in to Ofischl Sports and told me to attend a City Council Meeting regarding a downtown development project that evening. This was the first time I had ever attended a City Council meeting and within the first 30 minutes, I realized the proposed development would devastate small, existing retail businesses in downtown. The second thing I realized at the meeting was that the development was already mired in corruption as the city had already been found guilty of violating the Open Meetings Act of Illinois regarding the development. Since there are no consequences for violating the open meetings act, the city continued to violate it. I soon got involved with a small business organization that opposed the development and that is when business started going down hill rapidly. The city, including the school districts and other organizations stop doing business with me [The primary motivation for the development was to massively increase tax revenue in order to massively increase the number of public sector workers including teachers and administrators. When the project didn’t meet tax revenue expectations, almost 600 municipal workers had to be laid off as the City had “spent the tax revenue before they collected it”]. In April of 2001, there was a critical municipal election that would ultimately decide the fate of the development. If the incumbent 1st Ward Alderman won the election, the project would move forward. If the opponent won, the project would not go forward. The opponent happened to be a Professor from Northwestern - Kellogg who was an expert on Government Financing. The incumbant won by less than 60 votes and yes, the election was rigged.