Holiday shopping wrapped up on Saturday, and Hibbett Sports (HIBB) is looking fit.
"We've had another good year on top of really good numbers last year," said Chief Executive Jeff Rosenthal.
He wouldn't comment specifically on holiday sales ahead of the firm's fourth-quarter release, but earlier had said the season started out strong.
Now Hibbett is looking forward to another shopping stampede in coming weeks as frenzy builds around the national college football championship game between Louisiana State and the University of Alabama.
The playoff between the top-two ranked college teams will be held in New Orleans on Jan. 9.
"Hibbett will be the primary go-to place for a lot of the official stuff," said Sam Poser, a retail analyst with Sterne Agee.
Birmingham, Ala.-based Hibbett has lots of sporting goods stores in towns throughout Alabama, its home state (go Crimson Tide!). But it also has a strong presence in Louisiana (Go Tigers!).
Stores stock all manner of team apparel and paraphernalia.
Alabama Victory
"If Alabama wins, it will be it extremely positive for Hibbett," Poser said. "But either way, it will be positive because the people who live in Alabama and Louisiana are rabid college football fans."
Hibbett's 819 stores are located in small to midsize markets largely in the South and Southeast. The chain has been expanding to the West and North.
Besides team merchandise, stores carry apparel and footwear brands not easily found in its small-town locales, such as Nike (NKE), Under Armour (UA), Adidas and the North Face.
More than 75% of Hibbett stores are set in strip centers, and most of them are near a Wal-Mart (WMT) to feed off traffic from the mass-market giant. Rosenthal says Wal-Mart doesn't carry those aforementioned brands, and often nor do other local stores, making Hibbett the only game in town.
Those footwear and apparel brands have been hot sellers, Rosenthal says.
