The company was founded in 1983 by a couple of local joes who lived in the Fens neighborhood in Boston and didn't have anyplace to buy sporting goods. The basic concept was right - the neighborhood needed sporting goods - but neither guy had a clue how to run a retail company, or what exactly the store should carry, or what the store should like, or any of those kinds of details. By 1987 the joes thought they'd made some progress, having developed a product mix and a store look and a customer service approach that seemed appropriate for the customers they were getting - city-dwellers or workers who lived an athletic lifestyle. At that point they opened a second store and began to grow the company. The same joes are still running the place today.