It all started when one of Jan Woodley’s sons wanted to give a baseball to a friend as a birthday gift 23 years ago.

“I couldn’t find one in Jefferson County, so I had to go to Silverdale,” she said of not being able to find an affordable baseball. That was when the germ of an idea took hold to open a sporting goods store in Port Hadlock, more than two decades ago.

Now 61, with both children grown, Woodley is closing Jan Good Sports, which was, for years, the largest sporting goods and clothing store in Jefferson County outside of Port Townsend.

It’s not that the business is failing or being threatened by the Internet, although Woodley says the impact of the Internet has been “huge.”

“People say they’re sorry we’re going out of business. They think we’re closing because we can’t survive. It’s just because I want to retire,” she said.

She’s been a one-woman show for most of those years. Her mother helped out for a while but said she didn’t want to be involved in retail.

“She said she’d help me behind the scenes, and it started out so slow. She didn’t think she would like it,” Woodley said. But over the years, her mother warmed up to it and began to enjoy it.

Other things changed as well. After starting in a small shop near where Hello Gorgeous is located today, Woodley moved her store to Kively Center. She continued to add to her inventory: more apparel for women, men’s sweatshirts and clothing, sunglasses, jewelry, hats and scarfs.

“My philosophy is if you couldn’t price it so it was affordable, you weren’t going to sell it, so you might as well not stock it,” she said of wanting to make sure her prices were affordable to local people who didn’t have the time, the money or the inclination to drive very far.

She also printed uniforms for Little League and added a custom embroidery service, which she has sold, as well as a trophy-engraving business that one son, Chad, is to take over.

In addition to sporting goods, she had a batting cage for a while. Later, she added tanning beds, a hit with teenager girls. She’s still looking for a buyer for both of those tanning beds.

SILVERDALE, INTERNET

As for the impact on the community of her business closing, Woodley expects most people to go to Silverdale for the things she sells, or to look on the Internet.

“That’s what I’m going to do with the rest of my stuff,” she said. Any inventory she doesn’t sell from her shop by June 3, she’ll probably sell online.

Although her last official day of business is June 3, she said she probably would have the shop open for business off and on through about June 16 as she’s packing things up.

Like the owner of Sport Townsend, a business that closed earlier this year in Port Townsend, Woodley said customers don’t realize that small businesses like hers can’t buy directly from suppliers and get wholesale prices as Walmart and other stores do, buying in groups and getting discounts.

“You are forced to not carry those name brands, and people want them, like Seahawks jerseys. I could get them, but they’d be $200.… Unless you are huge, you have to pick and choose what you are trying to supply the public.”

Woodley said she’d been told that the 2,400 square feet of space in Kively Center has been rented to Washington State University for classrooms.

In the meantime, she’s still selling to those friends she’s been selling to for decades and ending a chapter in Port Hadlock that all started for want of a baseball.