It didn’t take long for lineups to form outside The Soccer Shop on Queen Street in Hespeler after June 11, the day the province gave the go-ahead for non-essential retail stores to reopen with capacity limits.
As one of hundreds of local retailers eagerly anticipating a return to normal, the lineup of cars and people waiting to get in the niche sports store was something Tony Da Silva has waited over a year to see.
The nearly 30-year-old family business isn’t a chain store or franchise. They don’t carry equipment for socially-distant sports like tennis or kayaking.
They do soccer — football for true fans — and that’s it.
So, the pandemic lockdowns hit them hard.
“We’ve had three good months out of the last 16 or 17,” says Da Silva, who runs the administrative side of the business while his son Ryan manages the Cambridge and Guelph stores with help from youngest son Matt.
Da Silva Enterprises also provides awards and apparel for rep teams from Guelph to Brantford, sales of collectibles and plaques and promotional materials, all of which dried up soon after the pandemic arrived and team sports went into hibernation.
Step 1 may have offered a glimmer of hope, but a move to Step 2 will be the biggest step toward a return to normal as local sports teams resume play.
July, he says, will be crazy. But the head of the city’s only family-run soccer equipment supplier says it will be a “welcome inconvenience” to sell out inventory that’s been in storage for months.
“With everyone getting started all at once, it’s going to be kind of a scramble,” he says with a smile.
Da Silva took a minute to step away from the busy shop Saturday morning where the phone was ringing and a few customers were picking up jerseys and trying on shoes in anticipation of a return to the pitch later this month.
With capacity capped at 15 per cent for non-essential retail, The Soccer Shop can only permit up to three customers at a time in the small space.
A move to Step 2 means non-essential retail capacity gets bumped to 25 per cent. Outdoor sports games, leagues and events can also resume at 25 per cent capacity.
Right now, teams are only allowed to practice outside to a maximum of 10, meaning many teams can't kick a ball around with a full contingent of players.
“They’re desperately waiting for Step 2," Da Silva says. "Hopefully our region will get into games later this month."
Their online store, The Soccer Fanatic picked up some of the slack, but there’s no replacing the in-person shopping experience, especially for footwear, Da Silva says.
Yes, the federal and provincial small business subsidies helped, but Da Silva says it was his own line of credit that kept the business afloat.
He counts them among the lucky ones that get to reopen and dig themselves out of the hole the last year has put them in.
Fan merchandise sold well during the 2020 Euro Cup, giving the business a foothold to climb out of that hole, but the move to Step 2 is crucial to a return to pre-pandemic revenue, Da Silva says.
The hold back in Waterloo region was tough to take, he says, even though Euro sales have been as good if not better than any other year they've had, despite Portugal's early loss.
It gives him hope that soccer will be bigger than ever when local players are allowed to return to the field.
