By SARAH SHMERLING | Managing Editor
With about a year-and-a-half to plan, Bob Benton is already thinking about the selection his sporting goods store will offer when it returns to the Palisades.
At the end of July, Benton announced that his store, Bentons Sports Shop, was the first to officially sign a letter of intent to return to the completed Rick Caruso’s Palisades Village project.
“I’m very excited about
it,” Benton shared with the Palisadian-Post.
Benton explained that over the past eight years, the Swarthmore Avenue shops in Pacific Palisades have been somewhat of a ghost town.
“There’s no [foot] traffic during the day, it’s been horrible,” he explained, sharing why be believes the Palisades needs the Caruso project. “I think it’s going to be great for everyone.”
The family-owned store has been in the Palisades for nearly 35 years, but Benton is aware of the suffering of sports shops.
“In my industry, we’ve lost Sports Chalet and Sports Authority—people continue to buy things online,” Benton explained. “I wasn’t going to come back to break even.”
When Bentons Sports Shop closed to make way for construction, Benton wasn’t sure if he should retire or plan to come back when Palisades Village reopened. He said he was always 100 percent behind the project, just unsure of whether he would return.
After making the decision that he wasn’t ready to retire, Benton began to plan.
“I’m selling community, I’m selling service, I’m selling convenience—that’s probably the number one thing,” Benton said.
He shared that he plans to introduce new products, but that he’s “not going to reinvent the wheel.”
“The industry changes and so do I,” Benton explained. “We will still be a place where my main focus will always be family. It’s going to be the kid 14 or under, boys and girls, for swimming, baseball, soccer … and the things that their moms and dads do to keep in shape.”
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