IN September 2024, Western Sports — a distributor of sporting goods in Jamaica — marked 50 years in operation.

From its its humble beginnings in Montego Bay, St James, the company has since expanded to now serve the sporting goods market from four locations — one in Montego Bay, one in Ocho Rios and two in Kingston.

“We started the sports shop in Overton Plaza in Montego Bay, 1974, September” Carl Chang, the managing director of Western Sports, told the Jamaica Observer as he reflected on the origins of the company in a recent interview.

The “we” Chang refers to, accounts for his wife, who is a co-founder and owner of the company. The name itself ‘Western Sports’, he said, was derived from its location in the western end of the island.

Chang said the company was born out of a pressing need for a sporting goods store in western Jamaica, where residents had to travel all the way to Kingston to get their hands on quality gear, other than buying “some cricket balls and odds & ends” in a section of a hardware store.

Two years before taking the plunge, Chang’s career as a service technician for National Cash Register Limited (NCR) took him to Montego Bay. There, he was responsible for keeping the company’s machines humming in hotels, supermarkets, and offices across the western end of the island –Trelawny, St James, Hanover, Westmoreland and St Elizabeth– along with an assistant.

There he said his talent as an all-round sportsman — being adept in cricket, football, field hockey and table tennis — helped him to blend into the Montego Bay community.

“While I was in Montego Bay, I was required to report into Kingston regularly, and, at that time, even within the groups that I played different sports with, they couldn’t get equipment. And, so, they would say ‘Carl, when you go into Kingston, buy this for me at Antillean or buy this for me at this other store, or pick up this for me,’ and so on. So I found that there was definitely a need…because Montego Bay didn’t have anything,” he said.

“And then I started to realise that I could pre-empt what they would ask for, and so I would buy a little extra and keep it in my office in a little box in the corner, so the next time they want, I just take it out of the box [and sell them].”

To make a little cash on each purchase, Chang said he asked the stores in Kingston for a discount whenever he bought goods from them because he did not charge his ‘customers’ above the price listed in the stores for the goods he bought.

With no full-service sports store in Montego Bay, Chang said he took it on himself to chance it. By that time, he said the requests to buy sporting goods in Kingston for friends in Montego Bay had grown with even whole sporting teams — both school and club teams — now asking him to purchase kits and other equipment as a favour for them.

“In those early years, there was a severe restriction on imports,” he said as he outlined the first major hurdle he faced at the start of his business in 1974. Then, the country was experimenting with socialism at the height of the Cold War — a decades-long ideological rivalry between the US and Soviet Union, marked by tension and proxy conflicts, but no direct military clash.

The US dollar was in short supply in Jamaica at the time which led to severe shortages of goods which were mostly imported. The shortage forced the Government to restrict imports, and decree that importers needed to get a permit which outlined their quota.

And though Chang was now operating his store, he was still relying on stores in Kingston to sell him some of the things they had in stock for his store in Montego Bay.

“And then ultimately, we made an application to the ministry for our own import quota because everything is restricted, you had to have an import quota for you to consider importing anything. So we sold them the song that there’s no sports shop outside of Kingston, so we need to get a quota. So we got that. So once we were issued a quota and an opportunity to import for ourselves, we started importing instead of continue to buy from the guys in Kingston.”

He said that allowed him to go straight to the agents in Jamaica that represented Puma and Adidas sporting goods to buy from them.

“So they were quite happy to book me products if I had my own quota so that they could get a commission. So once I got my quota, I would place an order with them and they would send that order off to Germany and Germany would ship me the products.”

“Initially, we had to be very frugal in how we spend, because we were just buying goods from the stores in Kingston at a discount, and we didn’t want to burden the consumers there with paying significantly higher than what they would pay if they got it from Kingston, so we just did a marginal markup.”

He said the brands he stocked in the early years were Puma and Adidas which were bought from agents representing the brands in Kingston. Those were the brands preferred amongst the football fraternity which was the biggest market for sporting goods in Jamaica at the time.

“And then there were other brands which did not have an exclusive agent, so we wrote to them and asked if we could import directly from them.”

Those brands include Japanese sporting goods maker Yonex, which focuses on apparel and equipment for tennis, badminton, running and golf; Butterfly, which is known more for table tennis equipment and even cricket equipment producer Duncan Fearnley.

“But then we found an opportunity in uniforms, so we bought uniforms from the factories in Kingston, things like football outfits and basketball outfits.”

At the same time, Chang said the import quota allowed him to import more goods than he could sell in his sole Montego Bay store. He then found himself turning supplier to customers in Kingston and that introduced the company to Kingstonians.

“In 1980 after the election, we felt this restriction on imports and quotas probably should ease up. So we said, if it is going to ease up, we have to jump in and to beat Kingston if the market opens up, because people know us already. So we opened a store at Twin Gates in 1981, August. So we were 7 years operating when we opened that store.”

But because Puma and Adidas were not his brand, he could not sell them in his Kingston store and ultimately, not at all.

“So I had to try and find my own brand, which was Nike, a shoe called Nike. A new kid out of the US, but we pursued them and got them to agree to give us the distribution. So 1981, we got the distribution for Nike.”

Nike then was known as a running shoes, but the Jamaican sports market was mainly one for football shoes and equipment.

He said that presented a challenge to him, one which he solved “within a season or two, through marketing, through sheer persuasion.”

Jamaica international footballers at the time, Howard “Juicy” Bell and Paul “Tegat” Davis were recruited as brand ambassadors for Nike and that helped to make the brand more accepted.

“The long and short of it was, with a shoe brand behind us, we ultimately were able to make a significant inroad in the market, especially the football and running and track and field market. Nike spikes, Nike netball shoes, Nike football shoes. It was a hot brand, so a lot of clubs and a lot of schools were actually more prepared to wear Nike brands than the traditional brands they were used to.”

Now he looks back and reflects on the last 50 years, Chang said he is happy that the company didn’t take on debt to start or grow. He pointed to the high interest rate regime in the 1990s, saying he was “kind of sensitive to the fact that if we go into that direction, we are going to get hurt.”

For him, whatever he sold was used to purchase new stock with only the small markup taken off to run the company. Everything else was ploughed back into it.

Ultimately, the company got into producing sporting uniforms for the various teams as well.

“As we also grew the sports side of the business, there was a shift in the 1980s where John Public wanted to wear a sports shirt as a fashion statement. Those brands took advantage of it. The Adidas, the Pumas, the Nikes, they realise that their brand was not only appealing for sport people, they were also appealing to John Public people, so they created a division for casual wear and because it is branded and we are connected with them, we went that direction as well. So currently, when you go to our stores, you can get all those brands in casual wear, not just sportswear.”

Now casual wear accounts for about 30 per cent of sales with the rest being sporting wear.

In the 50 years that Western Sports has been around, it has seen most of its competitors fold, but Chang wants to avoid that fate for his company, even as he prepares to step away from day-to-day operations at a time to be determined.

“Personally for my wife and I, we just want to see it continue to serve the community. Continue to serve the market that it was originally designed to do. But we can’t continue it, so we have to look at others who can pick up the mantle and will bring some fresher ideas,” Chang said.

He said he is proud of the fact that when Jamaica’s senior men’s football team qualified for the football World Cup in 1998, some eight of the 11 players donned Puma gear, supplied through his stores contract with the sporting goods producer.

Other memories were not so pleasant, like when the COVID-19 pandemic slashed the stores sales by 60 per cent, and it took two years after to recover because he was determined not to borrow to stock the stores.

But being around sports for as long as he has been, Chang said he has been a first-hand witness to all the changes taking place.

Cricket, which was once number one or two in Jamaica, is rapidly declining and that is seen in the volume of cricketing gear that are sold these days compared to the 1970s and 80s.

“The landscape has changed in terms of how people buy goods now. They would come to the traditional sports shop because that is probably the only opportunity they can get. But we find now that there are a lot of informal opportunities because the market is open. You could, probably, if you pass through India, buy a dozen cricket bats and bring them in your suitcase and you go around to the schools and sell them, and a lot of that happens, a lot of informal sales.”

He said some get caught in the counterfeit market when that happens.

Yet, one of his biggest pain points in relation to changes in his business, is the impact, the increase in the duty-free allowance for individuals importing to US$1,000 is having.

“I find that very difficult to understand. How can you have someone import goods duty-free up to US$1,000? That’s something that is gone to someone in the States and you have people out here with the same products selling. And if you sell it, you get GCT off it, when you pay someone you get the income tax off it, but when the US$1,000 is gone to someone in the States, it’s gone. It amazes me how they think,” he said.