Eastern Mountain Sports Opens New Portsmouth Location

Eastern Mountain Sports, a leading specialty outdoor retailer, is continuing its business strategy to open larger, re-formatted stores with the introduction of a new location in Portsmouth, N.H. The 15,000 square-foot store, scheduled to open on Wednesday, August 1, is marking the company’s 40th anniversary and utilizes a new store format that is successfully being rolled out throughout the company’s locations. The Eastern Mountain Sports Portsmouth store, at 100 Arthur Brady Drive, will offer a larger selection of boats on site than any other location.

The Portsmouth store will open with a community festival featuring music and food from local Portsmouth vendors and artists, including Muddy River, Harpoon Brewery and Recycled Percussion. The grand opening events will also feature biking, climbing and kayaking clinics with Eastern Mountain Sports School certified instructors, as well as adventure racing clinics led by members of the 2006 U.S. Adventure Racing Champions, Team Eastern Mountain Sports. One percent of the proceeds from the opening weekend will be donated to the New Heights Program.

“The Portsmouth market is important to Eastern Mountain Sports as a gateway to so many outdoor activities and a young, vibrant community that appreciates what the great outdoors has to offer,’” said Will Manzer, president and CEO of Eastern Mountain Sports. “We look forward to serving Portsmouth as a gathering place not only for consumers new to the outdoors, but also those who have already adopted this healthy lifestyle.”

Since late 2004, the company has been under new management led by Will Manzer, formerly of Perry Ellis menswear. The company has embarked upon a focused plan to: connect the Eastern Mountain Sports brand to younger consumers; re-energize its real estate from malls to freestanding lifestyle centers, and return the brand to its original climbing and outdoor roots. In addition, Eastern Mountain Sports has expanded its highly respected Schools program with additional locations for its Climb, Kayak and Ski Schools.

The new store format will feature an experiential shopping layout with visuals designed to enhance and streamline the shopping experience. An interactive community area, or the “Hub” of the store layout, will be a place to share community information, upcoming events and adventure planning information. A larger selection of outdoor apparel and gear will also be available, including Eastern Mountain Sports proprietary products such as its outerwear layering system SYNC; Techwick, its versatile, moisture management base layer, and the recently launched EMS® Workhorse Pack series for men and women. Like all other Eastern Mountain Sports stores, the new Portsmouth location will include Foot Gurus, sales associates specially trained to analyze feet and custom-fit athletic footwear.

Founded in 1967 by two New England rock climbers in Wellesley, Mass., and based in Peterborough, N.H., Eastern Mountain Sports is one of the nation’s leading outfitters of outdoor gear, clothing, footwear and accessories with 67 retail stores in 12 states. Eastern Mountain Sports designs and sells products for outdoor adventurers who participate in a variety of sports, such as mountaineering, backpacking, camping, hiking, adventure racing, climbing, kayaking, mountain biking and snow sports. Eastern Mountain Sports product and technology is tested by its product development and quality assurance teams in conjunction with the Eastern Mountain Sports Climbing, Kayaking and Ski Schools. More information is available at www.ems.com.

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