Denis Charlebois has always been in the retail business and managed to ride the storm of 2008’s crash and still be a generous entrepreneur by being an integral part of the community. In late October of his year, his sports apparel store changed name from Intersport to Sports Experts.
He began offering sports apparel in the early 80’s with his Top Chrono store which was located on Main Street in Hawkesbury. He then bought into the Intersport franchise and soon after moved his store from Main Street to the Harden’s development, on Highway 17, where his store is now located.
“We were happy to move into the Harden development because it brings a lot more traffic, which is a must for my type of store. Sports Experts owns the Intersport brand and was used for smaller scale stores and with time there were less and less Intersport locations because they kept growing and transforming into Sports Experts. Finally the company said why not just change all the locationsto Sports Experts. I am officially the only Sports Experts franchise in Ontario.”
He believes that having all the stores under one brand will make it easier for the parent company to concentrate the marketing budget by promoting only one brand of store, especially as the Sports Experts brand is associated with large commercial centres across Quebec.
