By Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
Some people will turn if a black cat crosses their path and some will avoid staying on the 13th floor of a high-rise hotel.
Homer Brown didn’t let the superstition of Friday the 13th keep him from starting his table tennis store at Brookwood Village.
“I don’t think I thought about it,” Brown said of that day in 1999. “I was excited and I wanted to get open. That was the first day we could get open so I grabbed it. It was a Friday and I figured Friday would be a good day to be open.”
Sunday, Aug. 13 of this year, Brown began the 25th year of his business, BumperNets. It is a commercial operation that has outlived the mall in which it began and the anchor of another mall – the Riverchase Galleria – where it has flourished.
BumperNets was at Brookwood Village for about a year and a half before moving to the Galleria in March 2001.
“We started out in the food court,” he recalled. “They didn’t have a place in the mall because it was so filled up so they started me out in the food court where Starbucks was down there.”
Brown did business there for six months before he moved to a bigger location in the Galleria, albeit still smaller than his initial operation at Brookwood.
“We were in there six months and then they moved us to a bigger store,” the entrepreneur said.
After “kicking off the brand,” the store moved to a few locations at the Hoover mall before winding up next to the Sears department store. Brown admits now he was somewhat anxious when the mall anchor shut down.
“I was concerned but I said to myself, this will be a real chance to see how good that BumperNets brand really is,” he said. “Clearly the good Lord has kept us in business.”
It didn’t hurt that his store had a door that provided direct access for patrons from the nearby parking lot.
“If I hadn’t had that, I might have thought a little bit differently about staying in here,” he said. “But (Sears) has been gone for 3½ years.”
Now, with three storefronts, Brown and some others call that area the BumperNets wing of the Galleria.
Lifelong Pursuit Habit Activity
Brown’s love of table tennis dates back to his play with his father as he grew up in St. Louis.
“We used to go down in the basement and play and have some good times,” he recalled. “That was another reason why I really wanted to have a place to go to encourage more of that father and son time together.”
Brown got into table tennis on a bigger scale when he enrolled at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. He set up and played in tournaments against other Christian colleges.
His love of the sport continued beyond his college days. He achieved major success as a 50-year-old at the National Senior Olympics.
“That’s when I won the men’s singles, doubles and mixed doubles,” he said. “That was back a few years ago.”
It was the same year – 1999 – that he opened his first BumperNets store. So what’s next?
“We’ll find out what the good Lord has for me,” Brown said. “My wife tells me I’m not getting any younger, so she doesn’t want me to get another store anywhere.”
But he hasn’t stopped competing. He took sixth place at the National Senior Olympics in the 75-and-older division recently in Pittsburgh.
“I just felt this is something I could do for a lifetime, where I could keep playing into my 90s,” he said. “Here I am, 75 and still going after it.”
