June 9, 2022

By Mick Garry, for SiouxFalls.Business

Volin’s Racquet & Soccer has been a steady and committed companion to several generations of sports families for more than 35 years in Sioux Falls.

Mignonne Schwebach, who started this retail outlet at Park Ridge Galleria in 1986 with her brother Jamie Volin, has sold the business to Logan McNichols, a recent college graduate from California who is dedicated to preserving the indelible impact this store has carved out in the community.

Volin’s might be changing hands but it is not changing brands.

“I want to respect everything Mignonne has created here,” McNichols said. “I’m not here to make big changes or anything like that. What she has accomplished is very impressive. Volin’s has been amazingly successful for more than 35 years, so I’m definitely a pupil for the foreseeable future in learning how she has built it up.”

Small businesses are bought and sold regularly in Sioux Falls. A few will involve enterprises easily identified with the person who created and maintained them. For Schwebach, who has been so closely connected with the racquet and soccer communities for so long, taking a step back will come with some challenges. Her heart remains in the right place, however.

“I sold it because I needed a little more freedom to be with my family,” said Schwebach, a member of the South Dakota Tennis Hall of Fame. “That was the main reason. I’ve loved this business, and I’ve loved my customers. I’ve met a lot of wonderful people.”

Schwebach is the mother of five, age 43 to 27. With their encouragement, she began looking into selling the business. As much as the business was her pride and joy, she was missing out too often on opportunities to spend time with her children, none of whom live in the area.

“At Christmas when they came home, it was ‘Mom, it’s time,’” Schwebach said. “It was ‘You need to be able to come and visit us.’”

Leaving town for a weekend, even when you’ve owned a business for more than three decades, can be a pain. Schwebach was working seven days a week much of the time. When she wanted to get away, she had to make sure the store was staffed, open and ready for customers.

So there were two sales that needed to take place. First, the family had to sell her on the idea of giving it up. Then, she had to find a buyer. The second part was easy; there was plenty of interest from potential owners.

“Last year, we had our best year ever,” she said. “It’s a good business. The other thing is it’s a vital place for the region. We have a niche, and we cater to that niche.”

How McNichols bought it is a story in itself, but to summarize: He is a recent Cal Poly graduate who initially moved to Washington to find a job in government. Through friends of friends, he became acquainted with a group of investors interested in helping people buy businesses in the Midwest.

They were attracted to South Dakota’s comparatively low cost of living and its pro-business climate. Though at first the idea of moving to South Dakota seemed somewhere between unlikely and outlandish, McNichols nevertheless did his homework. Eventually, the idea of running a business in South Dakota started to make sense.

Without any business in mind, he flew into Sioux Falls with a friend and started driving around. They visited places like Fargo and Bismarck in North Dakota and Rapid City, and then zeroed in on Sioux Falls.

In December, he got an apartment and began looking in earnest for something to do. His first step in that process was Googling “businesses for sale” in Sioux Falls, and eventually he got in contact with business broker Trevor Thielke. Not too long after that, Volin’s Racquet & Soccer showed up on a list of places for sale on Thielke’s website. Things fell into place relatively quickly thereafter.

“What really got me interested right away was that Mignonne is amazing,” McNichols said. “I knew right off the bat after our first meeting that she was really committed to making this business thrive even after she went through with the sale. It was very clear she wasn’t just looking to cash out and let it be someone else’s challenge. She wanted it to continue to be successful.”

Schwebach is still working during the day at the store while McNichols continues to familiarize himself with all that goes into operating Volin’s. He is getting to know all those who Schwebach knows.

“Mignonne has been there for me every step of the way – she’s had my back,” he said. “I’ve learned that this gal knows everyone in the tennis community extremely well. It’s a great community of folks.”

Schwebach’s connection to that community began as a child. As one of seven siblings growing up near McKennan Park, she spent a lot of time at the courts, becoming one of the best young players not only in South Dakota but throughout the region. The first winner of the state high school girls tennis tournament? Mignonne Volin of O’Gorman High School in 1969.

She is still playing several times a week, so her connection to the sport will continue on, as will the distinctive level of engagement she has enjoyed with the people and the families who have played it.

“There is one customer who started coming in when he was 7 on Friday nights,” Schwebach said. “His parents would be eating at Grille 26, and he’d come in here asking for a grip. I didn’t know the kid at all, but I said ‘OK, I can put a grip on for you,’ and he’d hand me a $20. He’d come in here a lot, sometimes just for something to do. It was great – sometimes he’d come in and try to hide under the racks – the kid was just a riot.”

His name is Rocky McKenzie. He’ll be a junior at Lincoln High School next year, and he already is established as one of the finest high school tennis players in the state.

“He still comes in quite a bit,” Schwebach said. “Those are the great things about this – getting to know all the families.”

Terry Nielsen is a longtime tennis enthusiast in Sioux Falls, a member of the South Dakota Tennis Hall of Fame and a tireless supporter of the sport for decades. Kind of like Schwebach you could say.

Nielsen described Schwebach as someone who easily could maintain a tennis conversation with a customer while stringing a racquet and could tell you the grip size of customers while they were walking through the door.

She was deeply engaged in her work, in other words, but in a casual way.

“We’re not going to let her retire from her volunteer role,” Nielsen said. “No way. She’s going to be there during the transition, and she’s going to eagerly be introducing a lot of people to the new owners. I believe they will succeed out of respect for her because they want the legacy to continue.”

Three of Schwebach’s children live in the Denver area. Another lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, and another in Toronto, Canada. She has trips planned to go overseas to Scotland, attend the U.S. Open in New York and will continue playing tennis several times a week. Most importantly, she’ll do so without the added strain of simultaneously running a business.

“When we first started the store, we had all the merchandise at home first,” Schwebach said. “I’d have the kids marking the prices on everything. It was a family thing for a long time. The customers who came in became a part of that.”

The customers are still coming in. Volin’s has withstood the emergence of giant sporting goods chains, in addition to a societal shift toward shopping online and, most recently, supply chain issues caused by the pandemic.

In spite of that, when McNichols saw it for sale, he saw something he really liked. The beauty in the transfer was that the original owner felt the same way.

“More than anything, it’s been the customer service,” Schwebach said. “People trust us. There’s that and knowing the merchandise. When people come in, we know which racquets will be good for them versus some other choices. That reputation has served us very well for a long time.”