Modell’s To Shutter Retail Locations After Bankruptcy Filing

By: Jamie Clarksom

Modell’s Sporting Goods plans to shutter all of its retail locations.

The announcement comes in the wake of the chain’s recent bankruptcy filing. The company was founded by Morris A. Modell – his initial location, which opened for business in 1889, was on Cortlandt Street in Lower Manhattan. Four generations of the Modell family have developed the family business into a chain of over 150 stores throughout the Northeast.

“Today, I had the worst day of my life,” Mitchell Modell, the company’s president and chief executive, told the press.

Blame the retail apocalypse. Falling sales of sports clothing lines and a basketful of unpaid bills led to the decision. Some have speculated that another contributing factor has been the disappointing play of many of New York’s professional sports teams.

Modell’s is America’s oldest, family-owned and operated retailer of sporting goods, athletic footwear, active apparel and fan gear. It always said it was committed to providing a convenient and compelling shopping experience for “the athlete and fan in all of us.”

Last Friday saw a large-scale liquidation sale at each of the chain’s stores. According to top chain executives, it could take as long as seven weeks for the remaining merchandise to sell out completely. The company reportedly has 3,600 employees in retail locations across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

Modell told the New York Times that “the combination of an unseasonably warm winter, six fewer days in the shopping season this year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, competition from Amazon and the coronavirus pandemic have hurt the company’s bottom line. “The problem is if the teams are lousy, you can’t give the goods away,” said Mr. Modell, who ran the company with his brother, Michael Modell, before he died in 2001.”

Across the decades, Modell’s has remained a family-owned business, passing through four generations of the Modell family. While best known as a sporting goods retailer, Modell’s also operated a chain of “full-line” discount retailers in the New York-metro area known as “Modell’s Shopper’s World” (and for a short time as “White-Modells”) from the mid-1950s up until 1989, when the company decided to focus on its sporting goods operations partly due to increased competition in the discount retail market.

William Modell, who became chairman in 1985, also founded the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation along with his wife, Shelby Modell. The chain boasted 152 stores at its peak, mostly in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. In recent years, the chain expanded to Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia as well as Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Their flagship store is at 234 West 42nd Street near Times Square.