From those early days of balancing college with work at the small retail store, Covington’s career evolved as he became an integral part of the company’s growth, transitioning into outside sales, taking ownership and expanding the business into new areas. Today, Sports Spectrum is a thriving operation with 22 employees and with recent expansion plans underway at a new 14,000-square-foot facility, Covington’s focus on the future is as strong as ever, looking to create new opportunities for growth while staying true to the company’s roots in team sports. To tell the story of the success of Sports Spectrum, Team Insight goes One-on-One with Jeff Covington.

Team Insight: Tell us your story about how you got started in the team sports business.

Jeff Covington: The company was originally owned and operated by a couple – Mike and Joyce Tindell – and Mike was sort of my mentor. He brought me in when he opened in 1982 and then in 1986 I graduated high school and was entering college here at the University of Tennessee. I heard about a part-time job opening so I went by and saw Mike, he gave me the job, and we were basically just a two-man operation.

How did you grow into the team sports side?

Mike’s background was team sports and in those days you sort of had to have a retail store to even be in team sports. He had a small retail store, so I went to college in the mornings and I worked in that store in the afternoons. About a year later, he asked me if I wanted to give it a try on outside sales, so he gave me some schools to go see. I went to college in the mornings and I would go visit coaches after class and sell and in the afternoons I went back to the store and did my store responsibilities. I did that for three-and-a-half years until I graduated college in 1990.

What happened next?

Upon graduating I stayed with the company and became a full-time sales rep in outside sales and from there, I guess you could say our company started growing as we started adding more people over the years. For me, I’m going into my 39th year. Mike retired in 2014, but over the years he and I had done some partnerships in building our second location together so upon him retiring, we owned the real estate jointly.

Anything else you thought up?

In 1999, I had this wild idea that we needed to own our own printing company, so we partnered up and started a separate division of team sports and that was our printing company, where we started doing our own screenprint and embroidery. Once he retired in 2014, I took ownership of all of it, from the printing department to the real estate, to the team sports and the retail store. We’ve been operating like that under my ownership since 2014. Today, we have 22 employees.

Tell us about your current expansion project.

We’re connected next to a large grocery store chain. Through some conversations with that chain we discovered they needed my property to expand and I wanted a piece of their property that they had on the opposite end of the campus. We saw an opportunity to sell the property to them and acquire their property and put up the new structure of this new facility, which broke ground back in June. We’ve gone from a 10,000-square-foot building to a 14,000-square-foot building that is now no longer 20 years old, so I’ve gotten away from all the repairs of a 20-year-old building.

How did this benefit the business?

This allowed us to design this building differently to meet the ways of today’s team sports business. Back in 2005 we had more of a retail presence, so now we minimized the retail and created more office space for our sales team and warehouse space for holding more inventory and increased the square footage of our lettering department. With that expansion, now where we’ve been in screenprinting and embroidery we’re expanding more into that direct print.

Let’s talk about the team business for a bit. What are some of your likes/dislikes?

Even as owners I’m still wearing multiple hats. Yes, I’m the owner/manager/garbage guy. You know, as an owner you do a little bit of everything and you never quit doing that, but I’m still actively involved in outside team sales because that’s still what I enjoy doing the most. Sometimes being in a store all day and trying to manage problems can get exhausting, so getting out and dealing with customers is still my escape.

How has that side of the business changed?

There used to be a time when we were first in it where a football coach would call you up and say, “Hey Jeff, I need 50 T-shirts. I like gray, put something on it,” and the coach didn’t know what he was getting until you brought them to him and he was happy. Now for 12 T-shirts you go through 10 different mockups and changes and it gets frustrating because the orders today are what I would call high maintenance.

So that’s the dislike part of the business?

That part is probably what still frustrates everybody in the team business. Mistakes can happen very quickly, especially when owning your own printing company. Mistakes can be costly. You’ve got to be very attentive to all details versus you know, I hate to say it, the older days. It wasn’t as time consuming as it is today.

With 39 years of experience under your belt, can you tell us your secret of success.

Oh gosh, I would think probably the secret to not just mine. Sports Spectrum’s success is probably the longevity of doing what we’ve been doing. Our secret probably is sticking to our niche when we saw the world of retail change, to online buying, to major box stores. We realize there’s some things that we don’t do today that we did many years ago. We adapted to those changes and I think it’s made us more successful. Sometimes less is better. We’re probably a little bit smarter in our buying today and a lot of that has come about with us being a member of Sports Inc. since 2001.

How about your personal method?

I’ve always thought my gift is organization and structure and discipline. I’m sort of old school. I’ll work off many to-do list on a weekly basis, but it’s that mentality and how I deal with my customers that has helped my success and I think my customers over the years have learned that they can depend on me, as cliche as that may be.

Anything else?

We’ve had a great sales staff. We have very little turnaround and we’ve had employees that’ve been with us anywhere from — gosh, we have some that have been with us now for 25-30 years, a lot of them that are with us have been with us at least over five or 10 years. We don’t have to deal with a lot of turnaround. If you want good people, you’ve have to work with what works for them too.

So what does your typical day look like?

My days are getting longer now and a lot of that’s come because I’ve raised our kids already. My day is definitely starting by 7 a.m. if not earlier. I do that because that’s when I can get the most part of my day going. It usually means by that point I’m meeting with the printing department because they’re in there early and then I’m working with getting the deliveries out for the day, and then I allocate a certain amount of my time every day for billing.

Then I meet with staff members and hopefully by late morning I’ve actually started selling sporting goods. I’m constantly either on the phone, sending out email, sending out texts. Not as much face-to-face as I used to have to, but again, I still allocate a certain amount of my time to get out and see customers. My days are long, but that’s okay. That’s sort of what fuels me. It’s like most ownerships, you just balance a lot of things each and every day.

What are you looking to accomplish this year?

Certainly with this new building, it’s sort of energized a guy who’s been in it for a long time. I think it’s going to energize our staff. I’m excited to get into this new facility, getting the sales staff folks in their own offices where they can be more efficient themselves and having a better warehouse with more inventory to where we can turn orders even faster. Even though we’ve scaled down our retail, it’s a much more modern looking retail showroom now. My hope is that we’ll regenerate some of that retail business.

What about new opportunities in 2025?

We’re hoping we’re going to recreate ourselves just a little bit, but yet still stick to what we’ve always done and try to do well. I’m constantly excited about the corporate side of the business because some days I feel like there’s so much we could get out of there, but not enough time in the day to see it all. We’re fortunate that we have multiple avenues of business to go after.

And for you personally?

We hope this gives us a new vision for years to come. I’ll be 57 this coming year. I like to think I’ve got another good 10 years in me. I hope my health stays in there, but I still have a good group of folks that’s been with us a long time that still want to carry it on. I’m just I’m optimistic with this new venture. 2024 was as good a year as we’ve ever had, so I’m looking for 2025 to be even better.