Coast Mountain Sports
122 Banff Avenue
Banff AB T0L 0C0
Phone: 403 760 8249
www.coastmountain.com
Coast Mountain Sports in Banff is right on Banff Avenue, the main retail strip in downtown Banff. To make sure you don’t miss it, the Coast store is between McDonald’s and Tony Roma’s.
Coast Mountain Sports is part of the Forzani Group, which also owns Sport Chek and Sport Mart, and that makes Forzani a formidable player in the sports merchandise market in Canada.
Coast Mountain Sports in Banff is housed in a cozy little building. It’s nice to walk into whether you’re shopping or just browsing. You’ll find footwear on the street level and the rest of their merchandise (mostly clothing) upstairs. The physical space is a bit small for their fairly big inventory of sporting and outdoor goods, so you might be bumping into stuff all the time.
I was looking for a warm, reliable pair of winter boots. When shoe-shopping I often find that stores don’t carry or have run out of my size. At this Coast store, I was lucky to find three different boots that looked promising, and they had all three models in my size. This meant that I could test out all my options and come to a satisfying decision.
The staff were alert and friendly. Even though it was quite busy in the footwear section, they were fast in getting me the boots I wanted to try. The boy who helped me seemed to really know about winter boots, and this made me confident that I would not go home with the wrong choice. I left happy with a great pair of smart-looking and functional boots.
Last thoughts: Coast Mountain Sports in Banff is the first Coast store from which I didn’t leave disappointed. The staff knew what they were doing, and the store had shoes in my size (this rarely happens anywhere else). I will keep this store in mind the next time I am in need of outdoor gear.
Product Range ++++
Service ++++
Ambiance +++
August 26th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Looks apparent to me that the same person wrote both reviews, and that person is the owner or manager of these stores as they are both the same chain. (Who else would take such great pains in both to give you a history of where the stores are located, suprised he didn;t give the GPS co-ordinates as well!) In fact teh current Coast used to be ‘R&R’. However, the Banff store definetly suffers from a paucity of stock. This store’s focus is clearly on high priced clothing where the margins are high. The main two stores in Banff for outdoor gear are Monod’s and Mountain Magic.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Tom, I can assure you that we are in no way related to the store and that this review is based on my personal experience.
I agree that the pricing is high and, even worse, the Forzani Group seems to own nearly every sporting goods retailer.
But I have a strange shoe size that’s difficult to find anywhere, so I appreciated coming across a store that has my size.