Despite a suggestion that its Ward Centre location should be closed, the athletic department says it will continue to monitor the struggling H-Zone store a little longer before deciding its fate.

The off-campus logo wear store opened in July of 2014 amid a projection that it would help produce an annual profit of $500,000. Instead, the UH Board of Regents was told in February that the outlet was losing $40,000.

Wednesday Joel Matsunaga, special assistant to the athletic director, told regents, “Financially it is still incurring monthly losses.” But, he said, “there are some positive indicators.”

He said items related to the successful men’s and women’s basketball teams had buoyed sales. He said, “We need other sports to be successful. Football is the other big one that drives a lot of sales.”

Regent Stanford Yuen said, “if it looks like a loser and smells like a loser it is a loser. So, I’m concerned about how long we are going to extend that.”

Yuen said, “Maybe we should say, ‘hey, the business plan is outdated and we had a false premise.’ Again, I would ask you to seriously consider terminating it.”

Matsunaga said, “Our only interest now is if it can be a break-even business for us because it then provides a venue” for fans in addition to online and on-campus sales.

But, Matsunaga said, “We have to be able to see that there is enough positive development that we believe that it can be done. If we determine that it can’t be done, then we would take action.”