By: Ali Elizabeth Turner
How in the world does the word “recipe” fit into the product and service description of a store whose titular focus has to do with all things athletic? Well, it is a dear and a tough story that Athens Athletics founder Randy McKinney told us recently at a presentation he gave at our Limestone Leaders Business Network International group. Before his mom passed a few months ago, Randy wanted to capture a bit of her legacy by getting the recipes of two of her most “famous” (and some of his favorite) dishes: “chewy cakes” and potato salad. Chewy cakes are essentially brown sugar brownies — no chocolate, nuts optional. They are soft, just like brownies, and have been a “must-have” in the McKinney family since Randy was a kid. The other was his mom’s potato salad that had a secret ingredient whose secret is now out. She would make a pretty standard Southern-style potato salad, and with each batch would add a medium-sized yellow apple for just a touch of sweetness. It was very important to Randy that she write the recipe in her own handwriting for reasons I’ll explain below.
Randy took some bamboo cutting boards and used the shop laser to literally burn the recipes on to them for family bereavement gifts, and the idea has taken off. Real estate agents in particular have taken to using the cutting boards to give as gifts at closing, and they are perfect for just about any occasion where a personalized gift for the kitchen fills the bill especially well.
The “bread and butter” of Athens Athletics has always been T-shirts, and with spring sports almost upon us, Randy and his trusty crew are gearing up for producing mini-to-mondo batches of shirts, depending on the needs of the client. Back in the day, the only way to make T-shirts was by use of screen printing, and Athens Athletics still does that. However, with the advent of direct-to-film (DTF) machines, it is now much easier, faster, and less wear and tear on the shoulders. The DTF machine also makes it possible for a shirt to have 16 colors, and with the DTF it is just as easy to make one as it is 1,000.
Randy spent two decades working at Steelcase, which was a stable and steady income for his wife and three sons. However, as is the case with so many of our Athens Now clients, Randy had the hankering to become a business owner, took his last two weeks of accrued vacation, and experienced an “apprenticeship-by-fire” learning the athletic supply trade at a local store before they closed their doors. He has told me with a laugh that he thought that he would eventually get to the place that he could watch ESPN at the shop and stay abreast of the sports world, especially baseball. While that hasn’t happened, over the years he has built a solid business and team, and this fall when he had to have rotator cuff surgery, they did a beautiful job of holding down the fort and keeping Athens Athletics going while he recovered.
Athens Athletics can do just about anything decorative to a hat, shirt, mug, trophy, travel mug, license plate, cutting board, and more. They also sell all kinds of sports equipment. They do computer-realized embroidery along with sublimation, which is a way of causing paint to actually sink into something like a metal license plate and become a part of it.
Another brilliant stroke was for Athens Athletics to become a U-Haul facility, and this helped keep them going during COVID. When certain businesses were deemed “non-essential,” it was determined that making it possible for people to move things was indeed essential, for which Randy has always been thankful. I can say from experience that when we have needed to use a U-Haul, Athens Athletics made the transportation part of our endeavor so much easier and treated us with great care and kindness.
Recently, a whole new feature and service has been made available to customers of Athens Athletics, and that is the online store. Many different schools, churches, organizations, businesses, and families have done fundraisers, and in the past, the ordering and collecting part of the endeavor could be a real pain. Beth McKinney, Randy’s wife spent years as a STEM teacher, and brought the online feature to the store. Now people pick the design of the shirt, go online to order it, pick it up, and the amount of the agreed upon fundraiser is generated automatically. Everybody loves it—the customers and the crew.
Athens Athletics has a saying, and it is, “If it can be decorated, we will decorate it!” Stop by today and let them show you what they can do for you, your business, or your group.
By: Ali Elizabeth Turner
