CASE Harrod's Sporting Goods im Harrod knew that service, above all, was important to his customers. Jim and Becky Harrod had opened their first store in Omaha, Nebraska in 1991. HarTod's carried a full line of sporting goods including everything from baseball bats and uniforms to fishing gear and hunting equipment. By the year 2004, there were welve Harrod Jtore, producing $5 million in total sales and generating a profit of over S200,000 per Nebraska), took great pride in his stores as well as his prior university affiliation. He and Becky (also a University of Nebraska graduate in the mid-1980s) contributed S2,000 annually to the University of athletic The growth in the stores was the good news for Jim and Becky. The less than good news was the intense competition that they faced. Not only were they forced to compete On the positive side, there was an increasing demand for sporting goods as leisure time activities continued to grow Also, the state of Ncbraska, where all twelve stores were located, was experiencing moderate growth. Finally, there had been a sharp upturn in the last decade for women's sporting goods equipment. This was particularly true of softball uniforms for high school, college, and city league women's teams. Jim's wife Becky was one of the top softball players in the city of Omaha and her extensive contacts throughout the state help to bring in new business. While Nebraska is primarily known as a football state, Omaha actually hosts the college baseball world serried each ycar in Junme and this generates a lot of stores such as Oshman's and the Academy but Wal-Mart and Lowe's also represented intense competition for the sporting goods dollar. It appeared that every time Wal-Mart opened a new store near one of its l The national stores were extremely competitive in terms of pricing. However Jim, Becky and their employees offered service, and they hoped this to continue with their would allow In January of 2004, Becky, who served as the company's chief financial officer walked into Jim's office and said, "Ive had it with the First National Bank of Omaha, It is willing to renew our loan and line of credit, but the bank wants to charge us 2 percentage points over prime. The prime rate is the rate at which banks make loans to their most creditworthy customers. It was interest in baseball (and softball as well). Jim, who had been a walk-on third string offensive tackle at the University of Nebraska (the Cornhuskers in Lincoln