Having just hit 40, Red Barnes can pretty much say he's
reaped the best of life. His sales manager, Alex Payton, expects
Barnes' Norfolk, Virginia-based Baseline Sports
Inc., a master distributor of trading cards, die-cast
collectibles and supplies, to hit 2000 sales of $24 million. Last
year's $19.5 million mark was accomplished without strain. And
somehow, with all that money, Barnes, his wife Darlene, and
twentysomething sons Bret and Blane, manage to live modestly,
remaining active in their community. Heck, Red still drives a
pickup.
Good-Luck Charm
Pickups are lucky for Red. It was in his '63 Ford that he
hauled a shed-full of trading cards he'd bought in Fresno,
California, with a $500 bank loan. The year was 1987, and the Navy
had just moved him from Hawaii to Lemoore, a small California town
"with about 12,000 people and one traffic light," says
Red. Bret and Blane had gotten into card collecting back in Hawaii,
and Red, looking for a way to bond with the boys, began collecting
as well. By the time the family arrived on the mainland, they all
had the bug. Too bad there was nowhere to go to add to their sets.
"We were searching for card shops in the area," says Red,
"but you'd have to drive an hour, and the guys weren't
friendly."
All it took to convince Red to fill the void in the trading-card
business was unloading some cards for "$63 and some
change" at a flea market. "I rushed to where Darlene was
working [as a marketing manager] and told her, and she just
couldn't believe it," he remembers. "We were in
seventh heaven."
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Red was going out to sea days later, so his family did the work
of organizing the rest of the cards, in hopes of setting up shop
when he returned. And they did—in the back of a craft shop.
"We had our own entrance, which was big for us,"
remembers Red. The rent was a whopping $100 per month. When Red was
gone on duty, Darlene would take charge of the store. And in the
early days, the doors wouldn't open until school let out so
eldest son Bret could help out, too.
R&B Sports quickly outgrew its tiny space and moved to a
larger location. Then, amid success, the news came. Says Red,
"I called Darlene from Hawaii and said, 'The good news is,
I'm coming home early. The bad news is, we're leaving, so
you need to sell the house and the business. I'll be home in 30
days.'" Red had been restationed.
"Neither of us wanted to leave, nor did the kids, for that
matter," says Red. But they packed up for Lorain, Ohio-home
state of Red's favorite baseball team, the Cleveland
Indians.
The family had no plans to open another store once they'd
reached their new home, but the opportunity proved too great to
pass up. See, football trading cards were in great demand on the
West Coast, but they were fairly easy to obtain in Middle America.
And Upper Deck's Ken Griffey Jr. baseball rookie cards were big
everywhere—so Red swapped football cards to the West Coast
for baseball cards, bringing a new sports-card business model to
life—wholesale.
In such a small town, the grand opening of the Barneses' new
retail store, called Baseline Sports, was big news and brought the
local press, swarms of people and success—for a while.
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