On February 21, 2020, Mitchell Modell, CEO of the largest family-owned sporting goods retailer in the United States went on national TV and made a shocking announcement-he asked viewers to help save his company from financial collapse. The 130-year-old brand at one point was a fixture in the northeast U.S. as the premier sporting goods retailer. Find out how Modell’s winning streak came to an end on Episode 39 of The Great Fail.

Episode Sources:

Modell’s Sporting Goods to Close All Stores After Bankruptcy Filing

Modell’s Needs To Figure Out What It Did Wrong

Sporting-Goods Retailer Modell’s Hires Restructuring Adviser

The Name Game: Why Tai Lopez And Alex Mehr Bought Modell’s And Other Retail Brands

The Death of the Great American Sporting Goods Store

Will a CEO’s crowdsourcing plea save Modell’s Sporting Goods?

The Decline of Modell’s Sporting Goods. What Happened? 10 Marketing Tips

Modell’s to close all its remaining stores after bankruptcy filing

Wikipedia: Modell’s Sporting Goods

Modell’s CEO: ‘The landlords are rooting for us’

Modell family spars over CEO’s $7M in ‘personal’ spending

Special Guest:

Mark Ryski
Founder, CEO & Author, HeadCount Corporation

Mark Ryski is the author of two books on retail analytics, Conversion: The Last Great Retail Metric and When Retail Customers Count – books that are widely considered the definitive reference guides for the retail industry. He is also the Founder and CEO of HeadCount Corporation – the leading authority on retail traffic and conversion analysis. Founded in 1994, today Mark and his dedicated team work with retailers across virtually all categories and sizes from independents to large chains.