It makes you think. The custom of considering where we are and where we are headed is a January tradition. Starting a new year with new resolutions is one way, and yet turning that question around could possibly be even more productive – what have we done right that we ought to continue?

We don’t treat it as a given, succeeding for more than 30 years here among The Shops at Sea Pines Center. Momentum counts for something in some things, but not in retail. As any merchant will tell you, it’s a day-by-day story to make a store succeed, and those days never seem to end. Staying successful turns out to be every bit as hard as getting successful. A story about that comes to mind now, during football’s playoff and bowl season.

No Walking

College football players who go out without a scholarship offer and win one as they go are called “walk-ons.” We hear firsthand that there is not much walking involved. And further, what a friend of ours who did this learned was that succeeding again can be just as hard as making it in the first place, maybe harder.

Our walk-on friend was fortunate enough to make the team a long time ago with a bunch of football players who really did know what they were doing and, as a result, he found himself in the Orange Bowl before he was 20 years old. One of the enduring memories was after the game, hearing the thoughtful, conscientious team captain making the rounds of the lockers and counseling each player that getting back to that level was not to be assumed.

No Easy Way Back

The captain was too right. This team was celebrated for the 50^th anniversary of its conference championship and its trip to the Orange Bowl. At that reunion, on the ring of honor around the stadium, where the legends and legendary teams are carved, our friend and his teammates saw that the last conference championship, the most recent year on the list, was indeed their year, a half century before. Hard indeed to get to that level again.

Imagine how impressed a guy who’s seen that must be when he sees three steady decades of success among The Shops at Sea Pines Center.

Where Interesting Things Take Place

We thought we’d share a little of this inside information, because the inside scoop is one reason people come to The Shops at Sea Pines Center. The beautiful plaza in the center of The Center has been a place where people gather to share what they know for more than three decades now, and The Shops at Sea Pines Center is known as a place where interesting things take place.

Please join us and enjoy this extraordinary collection of places to shop, to snack or dine, to peruse or pamper. We look forward to seeing you all through this glistening new year.