EMS Starting their used boat sales

Paddlers' Place
#1

For anyone looking used, if you are near an EMS worth checking out. Eastern Mountain Sports. Would not be surprised if one was in driving range of Long Island

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#2

EMS…?

Emergency Medical Services?

Equipment Maintenance Squadron?

Oh…

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#3

Eastern Mountain Sports

#4

Wow, that brand has slipped…20 years ago nobody would have asked what EMS stands for…

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#5

The stores are in the north east, ie. New England. I haven’t lived there since 1951. Why should I have ever known of them?

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#6

Fair point. I just ASSumed that they were a national chain. But then again, I’ve lived in the northeast since 1973…

#7

EMS was purchased about 8 years by some type of private equity company that also owns Bob’s Stores, another smaller northeast chain, and the quality has suffered. They literally told employees to go home as they were closing stores with no prior notice.
They had been designing some good gear up to that point, but financially had been mismanaged, forcing the sale in a hurried manner to a company who wanted the brand but didn’t care about the"culture" or employees. All the people who had been working at the home office and warehouse in NH were let go, including the folks who had been designing and ordering outer wear and whatever gear was house brand. I’m not sure what happened with their outdoor schools.

#8

I had not realized the level of disruption. They are running some very basic kayaking stuff near me on a pond you can almost stand up in. Nothing serious.

#9

North Conway NH EMS is closest to me.
They moved out of a fancy timber frame store to a basic metal warehouse up the road a couple of years ago
REI moved into the old digs and fancied it up more!
So it goes

#10

Ah, now I know why I get the spam e-mails from Bob’s Stores.

#11

Thanks, @Johnnysmoke. Wasn’t aware of all that.

Here on Cape Cod, they closed the Hyannis location about 3 years ago. Some of the staff moved over to LL Bean, which opened in Mashpee.

Then maybe a year later EMS reopened in that same location. Weird. Wonder if it was a technique to break an expensive lease…or just lose some good employees…

#12

At one time, mid-late 1970’s into the 80’s (long before online shopping existed), REI and EMS were catalog rivals for outdoor equipment and gear. Except that REI was a co-op and offered dividends on sales to members, as they still do. REI had terrific information filled catalogs, with adventure articles written by members of the board of directors as well as the company financial reports. I would keep each catalog for reference EMS had no such thing, but prices and gear offerings were roughly comparable (except for the REI dividend) and you could visit stores in the NE for customers to touch the gear and try on clothing. In addition to the dividend bonus, REI did not have any stores in the northeast, so they did not charge sales tax for out of state sales by mail (of course that has all changed now). Then some marketing genius at EMS decided that they no longer needed to produce catalogs, and moved to in-store sales only. That lasted a couple of years before EMS realized what a mistake they had made and returned to producing catalogs shortly before the time online sales kicked off. But I don’t think the company ever recovered financially from their mistakes.

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