My father, Willie, loves tennis. For him, it is more than just the game; it is also the community around it. In 1975, he turned his love of tennis into the Greenspring Racquet Club—the largest indoor tennis and racquet club in the Mid-Atlantic region. I’m proud to say that Greenspring has been a beloved part of the Maryland tennis community for decades. However, for my father, providing Baltimore with one great racquet club was not enough, and in 1979 he built the Holabird Racquet Club to serve the other side of Baltimore. That same year I joined my father in the family business. In 1981, we began a mail order business from the Holabird Racquet Club, shipping tennis racquets and specialty racquet sport equipment all over the country. We called it Holabird Sports Discounters, placed a 1 12 page ad in TENNIS magazine, and began fulfilling orders from all over the country. Even though decades have passed and hundreds of thousands of orders have been fulfilled, I can still remember the first order I ever took and how excited I was. We actually expanded our business after customers and employees expressed an interest in running shoes, in order to accommodate their requests. In 1989, back when people still dialed up through Prodigy and Compuserve, we developed our first Internet presence. Then, in 1996, we launched our first website and have been expanding online ever since. In keeping with the family tradition my own son, Brian, began working at Holabird during the summers while he was still in school. 10 years ago he started full-time, adding his valuable insight and taking his place in the Holabird family.

Staples

AEO

Toys R Us

Target

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