New retail ventures are slowly re-entering the Downtown market, and the addition of The Player’s Catalog, a new men’s clothing store marks a very significant move into the area. This mail-order-turned-retail store is located at 10 W. Broad Street inside the One Columbus Center at the corner of High & Broad, and will be holding their grand opening on Monday, May 10th.
“We’ve operated as a print catalog with online sales for quite awhile, but we actually started many years ago as a golf business”, said Ben Simon, General Manager of The Player’s Catalog. “So that’s where the name comes from.”
The transformation into a retail venture has been a gradual one for the business, as their focus has evolved over the past few years.
“We were testing some different products, and we determined that there was a market in the high-end menswear business, so we started moving in that direction five or six years ago,” said Ben. “We decided to totally move in that direction and now we have hardly anything golf-related and are strictly high-end menswear.”
Some of the brands carried include Cole Haan, Allen Edmonds, Jhane Barnes, Robert Talbott and Tommy Bahama.
“Our merchandise mix is a bit faster than others, kind of like a Nordstrom on steroids,” added Ben. “Customers will find a very wide selection of almost all of the popular brand names they know. It will look like Nordstrom’s Men’s Department in Downtown Columbus.”
The new store will serve as both a retail space for walk-in customers as well as office space for the continuation of the catalog and online business.
“We have about 1,000 square feet of retail in the front and we’ll run the catalog from the rest of the space in the back,” explained Ben. “The big impetus for doing this Downtown is that we’re not a true retail store, so we don’t have to abide by traditional retail hours.”
The store will be open from 11am to 4pm to start, with additional hours to be added as necessary.
“We’re hoping is that the people in our building will help get the word out,” said Ben. “It feels like a small community Downtown even though there are a lot of people working in these buildings.”
More information can be found online at www.playerscatalog.com.