Norbert & Irene Olberz

On May 5, 2009, Sport Chalet founder Norbert Olberz was inducted into the Sporting Goods Industry Hall of Fame at the annual National Sporting Goods Association Conference held in San Antonio, Texas.  Norbert was unable to travel to the event, but it was a great thrill for me nonetheless to witness 350 sporting goods executives welcome Norbert into the Hall.  The Sporting Goods Hall of Fame was created to honor the pioneers, innovators and leaders who built the sporting goods industry and to help recognize and encourage excellence within the sporting goods industry.  Norbert joins luminaries such as Phil Knight, founder of Nike, Albert Spalding, founder of Spalding, Howard Head, founder of Head Ski Company, Jake Burton, founder of Burton Snowboards, Adi Dassler, founder of adidas, Gert Boyle, Chairman of Columbia Sportswear, and many others, and his name and story are now recognized as a great one in our industry.  It was a very humbling experience to accept this honor on his behalf.  Here is what I told his peers that evening:

Yesterday Norbert turned 84 years old, and was really grateful that his birthday gift was this induction.  He certainly is sorry he couldn’t be here. There are 4,000 Sport Chalet employees who are just as excited, if not more so, about this honor. In fact, all 4,000 signed letters nominating Norbert for this tribute.  All have at one time or another heard Norbert tell us, after we reported a mistake to him, "It's okay, you can stay another week.”  Of course the first time I heard that I thought he was serious, and so I made sure things went better the following week.  

Fifty years ago, in 1959, Norbert was told by his banker that he was a California millionaire.  He had $10,000.  He sank it all into starting Sport Chalet, a 1,000 square foot ski shop at the base of the Angeles National Forest in a sleepy little town named La Canada Flintridge.  Norbert and his wife Irene could not afford a place to live, so they slept in the very back of the shop on army cots, and cooked grilled cheese sandwiches on a single burner propane stove.  At night, when the sun went down, they went outside and took showers by spraying water from the garden hose through the screen door.  To make ends meet, Irene took a job during  the off season as a teller at Bank of America making $65 a month. We are so happy today she did.

Norbert was an innovator.  He was one of the first to offer the exciting new sport of SCUBA at retail and the first to sell mountain climbing gear inside a store, because he was told he had the right accent for it.  Back then, that gear was only available through mail order catalogs.  He introduced so many new brands to our customers; he was the first importer of UGGS to the United States.  He listened to customers, took their advice and grew our company.  One of his favorite stories concerns the day a woman walked in and wanted to buy her son his first mitt.  It was summer, and Norbert was excited to be selling ski mittens out of season.  "No,” she said, "not ski mittens, a baseball mitt."  Norbert asked her what a baseball mitt was, and then he asked her what baseball was. 

He loves his employees and credits them with his success.  In 1998, he gave away $3 million of his own personal stock to our 129 longest tenured employees as a reward for the great job they had done, as well as their loyalty to Sport Chalet. Many employees couldn’t pay the taxes on this gift, so Sport Chalet picked up the tax bill and allowed the employees to slowly pay it back over time.  Over the years Norbert accumulated 29 homes, most with three bedrooms and a pool, all in a single neighborhood which earned the nickname "Norbertville,” because he allowed employees to rent these homes at $500/ month—an unheard of price in California.

In 2006, at age 80, Norbert began work on a new multi-million dollar shopping center to include our new La Canada store and corporate office.  He did it because  he loves Sport Chalet; he loves the City of La Canada, the State of California and he loves the United States, often bragging that he is a better American  than we are, since he had to work so hard to get here.

So now he is where he belongs, in the Hall of Fame keeping company with giants. The five key principles that got him here were just as true in 1959 as they are today:

1.    Be the image of a sportsman/woman

2.    Do one thousand things a little bit better

3.    Create ease of shopping

4.    See things through the eyes of the customer

5.    Strive not to be the biggest, but the best

Given all the turmoil and challenges our industry faces, discussed at  the many meetings and conferences that were held today, I’m sure if Norbert were standing here he would tell all of us, “It’s okay, you can stay another week.”