Advice needed for basketball store owner
 

Fellow refs, I just added a Basketball Referees section to my RefereeStore Basketball but since I don't referee it myself (I am only a soccer referee) I feel like I need to get more advice as to what would make the entire basketball complete.

Can anyone land a helpful advice? Please take a look and reply or PM me.

Much appreciated, thanks.

MODs: please remove if this will be considered self-adverstising and let me know if I could pay for it, I really want some advice from fellow referees.

Thank you in advance

Well, I'll be taking class soon, but not really a basketball ref yet..

Good looking site
 

I'm not going to dig too deep...
You can drop the 'watches' tab. bball officials don't use them.

on the accessories tab you show a coin. again not used.

the photo on the starter kit tab shows a belt. not used, except Connecticut.

i like the site!

No shoes in your basketball/shoe section; add at least New Balance and Reebok. Add Smitty lanyards.

By the way, here in PA, school soccer officials wear collared, striped shirts, the same style worn by football and lacrosse officials. You might want to cross-link to those shirts on your soccer uniform page.

Question; should we put in some regular stopwatches with neck lanyard, etc.? Is there always a managed clock, including all amateur levels or are there instances of referees using those stopwatches?

LRZ, thanks for the info - are the lanyards we have inadequate? Or are Smitty just your preferred brand?

You need to add striped jockstraps. :D

No stopwatches.

"smitty" is a type of lanyard, as used here (it is also a brand) -- it clips to the loop on the front of the shirt. Another type is a "noose" lanyard that goes around the neck -- and there are different styles of this as well.

Lanyards
 

As Bob wrote, Smitty offers some options that you don't--primarily the type that clips to the small ring at the base of the neck on collarless shirts, and the noose type.

But it's mostly about options and choices. Smitty is a widely-recognized name, and the cords and hooks seem to be slimmer than what you show on your site.

Point taken. Thanks for the lesson. Anything else coming to your mind besides shoes, lanyards and removing some unnecessary stuff?

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose ...
 

Didn't the NFHS send us a questionnaire back in February that included a question about eliminating the jump ball to start the game? If the NFHS ever eliminates the jump ball (as I pray for every night, shut up Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.), then we only have two choices to start the game: give the ball to the visitors, or have a coin toss.

Just my little corner of Connecticut. All the rest of IAABO (thirty-eight states and eleven foreign counties), bans the belt. My local board epitomizes our state nickname, The Land Of Steady Habits.

A couple ideas for "Accessories"...

-Shirt stays- Elastic bands with clips on both ends. Connects to top of sock/hose and bottom of shirt to keep the sirt tucked neatly (I currently buy them on Amazon)
- That rubber belt thingy that you wrap around your waist with little rubber nubs that also keep shirt tucked (alternative to "Stays") Anybody know the brand/product name of those? Maybe Magic Belt or something?
-Court diagram with little magnets and color coded coverage areas.

Also, under compression gear, you can lose the long sleeve shirt. All basketball officials wear short sleeves.

You might want to add compression items that referees do use for basketball: compression calf and ankle sleeves, compression socks, compression shorts.

FWIW, I have no problem with your site listing things (eg, LS compression shirts, wrist lanyards) in one section (eg, basketball) that only apply to another (soccer, football).

The layout of your site needs some work. Depending on the browser you use, it is not user friendly at all.

IE seems OK.

Chrome is busted. You have to scroll down about 2 pages worth to even see the items. The menu that is on the left in IE is centered in chrome and pushes the main page contents down below the menu.

I didn't check Firefox or Safari but you should.

I wish officiating retailers would get running shoe companies (Asics, New Balance, Saucony, and Brooks, to name a few) into producing all black running shoes suitable for neutral and support shoe types. Right now, some produce a few black models every now and then, and only Asics has a black and white model that I know of that they make with every new shoe addition. However, that model is a support shoe and not for neutral guys like me.

Some basketball guys are fine in the cross-trainer style but many of us aren't. Use your storefront to start asking OEMs to make more black models.

No problems in Firefox for me.

I'll pass on the long-sleeve, compression shirt though. ;)

Runs fine on my Chrome. I'm using Version 49.0.2623.112 m

It now renders fine on mine too. Looks like it has been fixed.

Few more compression items were just added and Long Sleeve removed. Thanks!

Still has to be further fixed by our developers, sorry about that, I noticed that too.

Stopwatches removed. Looking into more lanyards...

Anything you can find that would pertain to the female ref category would be a nice addition. We have several women in our association (including 1 on my crew) that just have an insane amount of trouble finding any items: shirts, shoes, etc. in women's sizes/fit. Unisex shirts/uniforms just don't do them any justice. My partner actually had to go to the boys youth section at Dick's Sporting Goods just to find a pair of black basketball shoes because there was nothing for women haha.

I agree, those seem to be just impossible to find.

I don't see Smitty of Cliff Keen making those shirts though (except few we found and added for Basketball - have you seen those?).

If you have any suggestions I will be glad to likely add them to the selection.

I know there are uniforms that are state/assn.-specific (most often sublimated with flag and or your assn. logo), but are they more popular than the generic ones? Are refs strictly following that and buying them rather than generic ones?

I think your site looks pretty good, but I have to ask what motivated you to start this business? No offense intended, but you don't seem to have a great understanding of how the world of amateur basketball officiating works. I wish you the best of luck, but I think you need to know that more and more high school state associations are contracting with specific vendors to provide 100% of the uniform shirts for all high school officials in the state.

The big companies like Honigs, et al, aggressively pursue exclusive contracts with state organizations, then create the customized shirts with flags and state patches sublimated into the shirt.

I'm not sure what your business model is, or how you manage inventory, but I think it is important to understand the nature of the business today, and then try to identify specific areas of opportunity in the industry that you can take advantage of. What will make your store stand out?

Selection of shirts and pants is great! Website looks awesome!!

Thanks for the input, I do appreciate and no offense taken whatsoever.

We are until recently specializing in being one of the largest soccer referee stores in USA and beyond.

It is our goal to expand into basketball and football which we recently undertook.

We differentiate ourselves by the fact that we have not only online presence but also a physical store (Referee Store). The store is strictly for referees/officials and not just general sporting goods store with small section reserved for officials.

We also keep stock on 95% of our items as we prefer shipping directly from our store. That allows us to control completely the shopping experience of our customers, rather what most others do, drop-ship from manufacturers.

We do not enter into contracts with specific states, but rather expand on the existing ones that, say, Cliff Keen has with many state associations.

While we didn't yet enter basketball state specific packages/uniforms on our site, we just completed those for Football officials.

In the end it is my belief that with unmatched selection and superb customer service, we can really add a great store for officials like you.

Having said that I am a retired national soccer referee and so I need to learn few things myself from officials like you as to what makes a great store for a basketball referee.

Should you have any more input or ideas, please let me know, I sure listen to all of it.

Thank you, on advice of members here we just added those few different Smitty lanyards too.

Love the input, thanks a lot all.

I'm not sold you should change anything I'm about to say, just random observations.

You have accessories with a picture of a bag/whistles/etc. Then you have an additional two tabs for bags/whistles. I would add them all into accessories and then possible have subsections.

Shoe section doesn't have shoes.

Compression pants are the only compression item I wear. I find them invaluable to keep calves/knees/etc warm. Though, I have a history of injuries so this may not be important to others.

The Basketball section link is Basketball

The accessories tab does not have a bag at all.

I am sorry, are you looking at the correct link? Please refer to the one above and tell me what you think.

Rafal

Oh, I was looking at it from my phone. Maybe it's a wristband or some kind of pouch and not a bag. Hah.

Ok, I think i know now what you meant.

You'd combine the bags, whistles/lanyards and accessories into one section called Accessories. No, that is not something I will do, there are too many items and they need to be properly categorized instead of having many many pages of items to scroll through.

The shoes we are still looking into, so please stand by for that.

As far as compression wear it was suggested that some officials use them for knee/calf etc so we added few.