Would not recommend DO NOT GO HERE NO MATTER WHAT THE SCHOOLS SAY! very unprofessional, very high priced for little to nothing on the jackets. GO TO JOSTENS. I came in here because the athletic director from Hoover high school told me to come here. She said they were good and my kid would get their jacket by Christmas and snarked at the other business. I originally was gonna go to. Which is.Which is Jostens. A guy helped me with the order and I mentioned we were told to come here instead of Jostens and I said the price of the jacket there total $350 he laughed and said our jackets gonna be wayyyy more. As if it was funny. THE JACKET CAME OUT TO OVER $600! After all was said and done I gave in out of pure me being a mom. IYKYK. I am so disappointed that they are ripping off students and parents this way. $150 for embroidery? Jostens includes it! $175 for a varsity jacket to start. That's way better then $250 starting After I said I was a single mama doing it alone and my mother who just passed has the patches somewhere and it was a very emotional process for us. I was met with coldness and jokes like this guy was just happy screwing people out of money. The guy also bad mouthed the other company laughingly saying the guy stitches it himself and it's bad work. So rude and unprofessional. I will tell everyone I know not to go here! All the one star reviews are accurate. That other owner of Jostens is sweet and kind. That is valued over the experience I had here at first string sports. The only thing that worked out there is the manager gave me money back and wasn't rude. So do not go here go to Jostens. Don't listen to the schools they have some secret agreement with them most likely. I complained to fusd as well. I see why most students don't get a jacket it's highway robbery. read more

First String Sports - Just a price from Jostens so you see difference if you go here. - Sporting Goods Near Me - Fresno, California

I read the online reviews and honestly, it almost scared me away. What brought us in, was that my daughter is itty bitty and we needed to make sure that the jacket fit her. We were immediately greeted and helped. We were shown an array of selections and taken to try on the jacket. The counter had a breakdown of the patch prices and other upgrades. I paid $560 and I feel that that is a fair price for the quality of the jacket and the upgrades we selected. We will have a longer turn around and that was because we made a custom selection with the full knowledge that it would take an extra week. The only rude interactions I perceived in store, were parents coming in without understanding the prices and snapping at the teenagers' selections and the poor workers. I saw it with my own eyes. Shawn helped us and he was full of price transparency & knowledge. As we made selections, he'd point to the prices on the counter to show me the difference. He also made suggestions on colors and patches that we loved and went with. We all shared a few laughs and honestly, I feel like my daughter and I had so much fun designing her jacket. Beautiful memories. Thank you Shawn and First String Sports. I will always recommend your store. read more

Always professional. Great service amd attention to detail Large selection. Glove relacing read more

Went in to get my son's baseball glove fixed and the gentleman who helped me was extremely Helpful and knowledgeable! He said it was just untied and not broken and he fixed it right on the spot! I'm Extremely Happy with the customer service! I will definitely be returning for future purchases!! read more

Went in to order my daughters letterman jacket. Ryan helped us out. We overall had a good experience ordering and he helped us out with suggestions on what would look good. I noticed before going in there was no where online to get a price idea of what it was going to cost us. The jackets start out at $229. That's for a jacket without a hood. Then the embroidery package starts at $99. And the embroidery upgrades go up from there. They do charge to sew per patch which can vary from $20-$30 depending on the patch. We will be back in the future to get patches added to the jacket. We picked up her jacket today and it looks great! The only reason for the minus one star is because we had to wait a month to get it finished due to waiting for a class of 24 patch to be shipped & delivered. Which added on 2 extra weeks. read more

Extremely rude and secretive about pricing. went in last month to get pricing and was told I could not be guaranteed Christmas completion. I understand that was my fault for not ordering sooner. Decided to confirm back to just get 2 small patches for gift in hopes to return after the holidays to complete. $84 was total for two 3-4" inch patches. That is no where near the price I was given three weeks ago, and downright extreme! read more

For well over 20 years we have been coming to First String for many different needs. From custom trophies/awards to sporting equipment, Letterman Jackets to team spirit wear. They have always delivered as promised, and the quality of their products are superior. The saying "you get what you pay for", definitely holds true. Not to mention, they are locally owned and operated. We always try to shop local, and will always return to First String Sports! read more

Though the quality is good, unfortunately their prices for sewing patches on has almost doubled in just 6 months. I get it. Inflation. But I have seen very few places that have literally doubled their prices in such a short amount of time. In August, their prices were $11.25 to so on a patch. As of today, it is now $20 to sew on one patch. This is quite literally the most excessive price I have seen for sewing patches on. Had I been aware ahead of time, I most likely would not have driven across two cities to bring the jacket in to get patches put on. And I recommend anybody who needs that type of service in the future, to look elsewhere. read more

Ordered our Senior his letterman jacket and they were super helpful and insightful on what our options were. They were patient in showing us all the available materials, fonts and patches. It was a wonderful experience and the jacket came in within their given timeline. We'll definitely be back! read more

Would not recommend managers here as they are very rude and sarcastic. Had a glove restring and the laces busted.

The service was great, fast and knowledgeable and friendly. A lot of great sports equipment to choose from. Our daughter's Letterman Jacket turned out as expected. read more

The service us excellent and the staff goes above and beyond to help out. The staff is very knowledgeable and are always avaliable to answer questions. Shawn and the great staff at First String are my go to for all my sports needs! read more

Had to revisit due to baseball team requiring specific uniforms. I have to say, their Customer service has improved and I had a lot better experience this time around. Credit to them. Hopefully they keep it up read more

Wow now I see what all the other reviews were about. This place not only has the worst customer service I think what little service they do offer borders on criminal. Three years ago I bought a letter-mans jacket there for my daughter. I paid over $200 for the jacket alone and over an extra hundred for the higher end embroidery package which included the sewing one of her varsity letter and any future sports patches to go on that letter. I was also told there would be small charges for any additional patches of letters. An example of the prices I was told would be if she received a frosh or JV letter in another sport it would cost $15 each to add those. Today I took in six of her award patches, a Stallion patch and her JV swimming letter. The award patches were standard round, two inch patches. The girl who helped us, with a snotty attitude, said each of the round patches would be $25 each. The Stallion patch would be another $25 and the JV letter another $25 ($15 for the letter and $5 for each year awa00000rd). Or a total of $200. The same amount I paid for the jacket. I asked for a manager because these aren't the prices I was told when I bought the jacket from them. Had I know they were going to try to gouge me when I came back to add on to the jacket I would have never bought it from First String. The manager did not seem to care. In fact he said they do hundreds of jackets and if they lost my business it didn't matter. Well maybe my sharing my story on YELP, Facebook and with the Better Business might warn others to stay away from this place. If I can warn anyone from Madera, this is not the place to shop at because they do not carry anything for either Madera high schools in stock like they do for the Clovis schools. That should have been the first sign that there would be trouble with First String, "F-Madera, we cater to Clovis". If you do buy a jacket from them beware that they don't back their products down the line and they do not care if you are a repeat customer. They do not care anything about customer service. They think they have you cornered because there aren't many places you can walk into and buy a letterman's jacket anymore. They forget the Internet is always cheaper and you can find the exact same jacket they sell at numerous websites for a much better price. When my younger daughter needs one next year that is where I am going. As for my daughters award patches and letters, I found a local seamstress that is doing the work for a quarter of their price, which ironically is probably what First String is paying their seamstress and pocketing the 500% mark up. First String are bad people - They didn't keep their word - Avoid there fraud and scams. read more

This place is so rude.... I called to ask for simple pricing on a Letterman jacket and the associate that I spoke to was absolutely rude. I understand every kid is different but I told him what my son wanted and he refused to give me any price other than the starting price of $199.99 for the jacket. I called other stores around town and they all took the time to answer my questions. If I wasn't such a busy mom I would go into the stores myself with my son to price the jackets, but I just don't have the time so a call for an estimate is what works best for me. If you are like me and are too busy to drive all around town and a call works best then you should try calling other shops in town who will take the time to answer your questions over the phone. read more

Horrible customer service...looking for some simple player bands for over two weeks every time I go in I get a different story. I was there three days ago I was told the bands had arrived just needed to be unpacked and stocked. Today I called and now they never arrived...I'm not not sure anyone has a clue at this store. Everything is marked up considerably and more expensive than other local stores "Except maybe Dick's Sports" and places like Midtown Sports and Central Valley Sports actually care about the customers. As a club President I have been doing business with them for our organizational needs for over 10 years and the customer service gets worse every time I go in. Moving my business to Midtown, CVS, or even online where with a small amount of work you can find great team deals. No Mas....First String read more

So nice and so helpful and we didn't even buy anything. They know all about softball and helped us with helmet info.

We have ton a large amount of teamgoods with FSS. They have always been great communicators and processed our order very efficiently and friendly. Whenever I pick up our gear from the store the staff is helpful and they have even delivered items when we were in a pinch. I would recommend without hesitation. read more

My customer service experiences with this place has been wonderful. I bought a letterman's jacket and the experience has been great. I'm surprised to see people's comments rating this place so low. read more

The trophies came out great. Just as ordered and the price was lower than I had paid elsewhere. The customer service was excellent and the guy that helped me (Jerry) was a pleasure to work with. He was very knowledgeable and helped me get even better trophies for less money! I will be getting all my trophies here for upcoming events. I am really excited I found this place. As I looked around I also noticed that they had a huge selection of sporting goods. I am gonna have to go back and look around when I have more time. read more

The worst customer service EVER!!!! Jerry the owner is was very rude,unprofessional, disrespectful, lacking in decent customer service. I tried to return a helmet that I purchased for a team through their site. This helmet was for my 10 year old son. I bought and adult s/m it was very tight. Completely unwearable. I immediately went in to see if I could exchange it for a bigger one. They did not have a bigger one. I was told the only one that could help me would be Jerry the owner. After weeks of phone calls, visits, avoidances, run arounds. I finally popped in the store. Luckily Jerry was there. Helping a customer with a blank check for his football (according to his staff). We waited patiently for 45 minutes while Jerry clearly avoided us. No " Hello" No eye contact.. Just clearly avoiding us. His staff apologized and reminded me that they were sorry that they could do nothing only Jerry was able to return it. Finally after all several weeks of visits, phone calls, run arounds. He sent his staff to tell me that he would only return it with a 25% restocking fee. I agreed. However, No where in the fine lines did it say " No Returns" or returns only with a 25% restocking fee. All this for a $35.00 helmet?? I have purchased so much there.. I know, I should have given the helmet to a needy kid.. I just could not believe how shameless Jerry could be. the ONLY good thing there is his other staff were nice,pleasant and seemed concerned. Other than that the worst customer service I have EVER experienced! read more