Sporting goods come to county
Shopping local will be even easier as S and S Sports celebrated its grand opening on Saturday, offering supplies and services Sanders County residents usually travel far out of town to purchase.
Shopping local will be even easier as S and S Sports celebrated its grand opening on Saturday, offering supplies and services Sanders County residents usually travel far out of town to purchase.
Wes Johnson first opened the family business, S and S Sports, in Ronan 17 years ago, selling recreational equipment and all the accessories needed such as snow mobiles, ATV’s, boats and motorcycles.
After listening to many of his customers discuss a location in the Sanders County area, Johnson responded and opened up a second location in Thompson Falls.
Johnson’s son, Shon Johnson will be running the new store.
“I think business will do very well, this is a recreational area and you have the greatest lake here in the world, it’s just a beautiful area,” said Johnson.
Johnson has already taken the initiative to be a part of the local community.
The Elks Lodge is currently in the process of trying to raise money to redo the youth baseball field in Thompson Falls. Margaret Smallwood, an Elks Lodge member, said she contacted five businesses in an attempt to get items donated for a raffle and raise money to sod the field, implement a sprinkler system and put in new bleachers.
The only business that responded to the Elks Lodge’s plea was S and S Sports, who donated a Tracker Jon Boat to help the cause.
Every single raffle ticket was sold and the winning ticket was pulled during the grand opening on Saturday.
Mick Lacy of Thompson Falls went home with the boat.
Johnson said the Thompson Falls store will have different operations than his Ronan store, focusing on the sporting end of products such as fishing, hunting gear and a full line of boats. They will also be offering a full service for all products such as ATV’s and motorcycles, if a resident needs work done on an ATV, snowmobile, motorcycle and such.
Johnson said their store will schedule an appointment and get their gear fixed promptly.
In addition, Johnson said, they will not be stocking a full line of ATV products, however, they will easily order a product from the Ronan store and have it shipped to Thompson Falls and save residents a trip.
Johnson retired from the Montana Highway Patrol 17 years ago and started a small repair shop as a hobby.
From there, the repair shop snowballed into a full fledged business.
S and S Sports will now be open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.