“It was this modest pride and quiet confidence that I most admired him for.” “While his reputation was larger than life, he was a simple man with simple loves,” his grandson said. The transaction was inked just ahead of the Great Recession. “I guess the lord was watching out for us.” “It was interesting because 10 days after we sold the business the economy went in the tank,” she said. The timing, according to Karen, couldn’t have been better. The company - which also maintained a Southern California distribution center - operated stores in such communities as Covina, El Segundo, Tustin, Murrieta, Norco, Oceanside, Laguna Niguel and Moorpark, among others.Īt its height, the retail chain employed about 1,600 workers.ĭick’s Sporting Goods acquired the company in November 2007 for $72 million when Chick decided to retire. The move kickstarted the Covina-based company’s expansion from a single store with $180,000 in annual sales to 16 locations that generated $120 million in yearly sales. Most of his competitors’ stores were in spaces of 2,000 to 5,000 square feet.

Eight years later, he moved Chick’s into a 22,000-square-foot space that previously housed a supermarket. In 1968, he bought the company from his grandparents at the age of 21, becoming president and CEO. He worked there while attending Charter Oak High School in Covina and continued throughout his college years as a business student at Cal Poly Pomona. The business was later bought by Chick’s grandparents, Ralph and Hazel Chambers, as an investment in their grandson’s future.

The firstborn child of James Elmo Chick and his wife Elizabeth, Chick’s entry into the business world began early when his father encouraged him to work at Chick’s Sporting Goods in downtown Covina, the first and only store his father opened in 1949.

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