Gart Sports and Oshman's To Play Ball

Gart Sports Co. (Denver) has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Oshman's Sporting Goods, Inc. (Houston), in a stock transaction valued at approximately $84 million (based on yesterday's closing price of Gart's common stock).

When the deal is completed, Gart will add the 58 Oshman's stores around the country – 43 of them SuperSportsUSA stores of the type Oshman's helped develop and design – to its own chain of 120 stores, operating under the Gart Sports and Sportmart names. Gart is the second-largest full-line sporting goods retailer in the United States. Only Sports Authority (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.) is bigger. Gart merged with Sportmart in 1998.

“The Gart Sports and Oshman's store locations are highly complementary, and the combined company will have an outstanding geographic presence in the Midwest, Southwest and Western regions of the United States,” said Doug Morton, Gart Sports chairman, president and ceo. “While Gart Sports and Oshman's currently operate in several of the same markets, we anticipate very few store closings from this transaction.”

Gart's large-market, freestanding stores average 40,000 square feet, though its other stores are as small as 9000 square feet. Oshman's SuperSports USA superstores average about 60,000 square feet and have basketball courts, batting cages, and golf simulators. These stores generate about 90 percent of the company's sales. Oshman's has closed more than 180 smaller stores since it helped pioneer the superstore concept in the mid-1990s.

Oshman's chairwoman, Marilyn Oshman, and its vice chairman, president and ceo, Alvin Lubetkin, will join the Gart board of directors when it's expanded from six members to eight upon completion of the acquisition. The agreement is subject to the approval of securities regulators and Oshman's shareholders. (Gart Sport's shareholders have already approved the deal.) It is expected to be completed prior to the close of Gart's second fiscal quarter, which ends Aug. 4, 2001.