Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian Schwartz.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Brian. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
What started as a way to make some summer cash – chasing autographs at golf tournaments in high school – eventually grew into a legitimate memorabilia business.
Upon finding eBay my freshman year of college, there was now a quick and easy way to buy and sell autographs all over the country. We invested into buying autographs from other larger companies and then worked our way up to conducting our own signings directly with the athletes. By my sophomore year, the decision had been made that this ‘side business’ would become my career. With major assistance from my Dad and brothers who were initially shipping everything out from back home, we grew both our inventory and our contacts within the industry. By my senior year of college in 2002, we had signed NFL legend Barry Sanders to an exclusive autograph agreement (one that is still in place to this day), acquired the rights to LarryBird.com (the site was later returned to Mr. Bird but we still conduct signings with him several times a year), and conducted signings with stars such as Brian Urlacher, Joe Montana, and Ernie Banks. We moved into our first office/retail storefront in the fall of 2003 in Northbrook, and continued to grow the business, conducting special event Team signing reunions with the 1985 Bears and 1969 Cubs, and immediately following their World Series victory, the 2005 White Sox. We were acquired by Dreams, Inc. in 2007 and moved into their new Northbrook headquarters, and the original Schwartz Sports was merged into their Mounted Memories division in 2008.
I left along with one of my brothers in 2011, and was allowed to re-start Schwartz Sports Memorabilia, and maintain our relationship with Barry Sanders. Dreams, Inc. was later acquired by Fanatics, and we still work closely with them to this day. My other brother left Dreams to re-join us the following year, and our headquarters have been based out of Morton Grove since summer of 2011. In the spring of 2016, we decided to open a retail store at Woodfield Mall under the name My Fan Cave. Following the Cubs winning the World Series, we again participated in a Team signing project and signed exclusive autograph deals with nearly a dozen members of the Cubs organization including David Ross, Mike Montgomery, and Theo Epstein. Based on the initial success of our first My Fan Cave store, we are opening new stores at Old Orchard (October 1st) and Oakbrook Center (late October) and look to bring more athlete public signings to the Chicagoland area.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Growing a business is never easy, but we have been fortunate to have made more good decisions than bad one when deciding which athletes (and thus which products) to commit our money to, and have been lucky in a few instances where the best deals are the ones that never got done. We were also acquired by Dreams at a good time (in hindsight) as the market crash that followed could have been detrimental to our business and under the Dreams umbrella we had the benefit of all their resources (financial and otherwise) to weather the storm when the economy went south. Today, the biggest challenge is with the enormous growth of e-commerce, while it creates more opportunity for us, it also creates more competition, as it is easier for someone to start their own business from their living room without much overhead.
Schwartz Sports Memorabilia – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We specialize in authenticated sports memorabilia, being based in Chicago we do have a heavy focus on the local teams, but have also worked plenty with national stars like Barry Sanders, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Jack Youngblood, Andre Rison, Allen Iverson, Brett Hull and have also branched into celebrities, conducting signings with the likes of Sharon Stone, Ray Liotta, Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Chevy Chase, Ed O’Neill and others.
We do aim to get signings done with the “harder to get” athletes and try to bring players for appearances to our retail store and the large Sports Collectibles Conventions in Rosemont several times a year. We also try to get unique items and inscriptions signed and take pride in our product to make sure the customer is getting a pristine condition collectible to add to their treasured collection.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
When we got bought out by Dreams, Inc. back in 2007, which was a publicly traded company at the time. That made me feel like we had done something right, that they saw value in our company and more importantly in US, that they wanted us to be part of what they were building at the time.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.SchwartzSportsMemorabilia.com
- Phone: 847-972-1670
- Email: info@schwartzsportsmemorabilia.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SchwartzSports
- Twitter: @SchwartzSports1 and @MyFanCave
- Other: www.myfancavechicago.com
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