Monday, August 19, 2002
Sports gear so out of style it's in style
By Michael Hiestand
USA TODAY
The NBA has high hopes for a $300 jersey it will launch during its All-Star Game hype next season — double the price of many current jerseys.
But not because the jersey is from a hot team, or because the player whose name is on the back is in today's headlines. Instead, it's a 30 year-old green Walt Bellamy jersey from the 1971-72 Atlanta Hawks, whose 36-46 record isn't likely to rekindle many fan memories. That's the point.
“The team only wore it one season, and even hard-core fans probably don't remember it,” says Sal LaRocca, NBA senior vice president for global merchandising. “But it tested 'really' well with our focus groups!”
Sports leagues, and their merchandisers, continually come out with new merchandise emblazoned with old team logos or the names of long-retired athletes. Such nostalgia usually produces just small streams of steady sales, mainly from aging fans shopping for time capsules from their youth.
But now those old hand-me-downs suddenly have cachet, especially among teenagers with new interest in what's old.
“I'm telling you, it's such an explosion,” says Howard Smith, a Major League Baseball senior vice president for merchandising. “We haven't witnessed a trend this far-reaching in our business in a long time.”
And it's one that involves the mysteries of fashion. Usually, the popularity of a team's merchandise, such as its jerseys and caps, is strongly linked to how well it plays. And the star power of the athlete on jerseys and T-shirts normally drives sales.
But when it comes to the retro sports look, on-field performance isn't everything. LaRocca says sales of the league's throwback Hardwood Classics are up about 250 percent from last year — and up 480 percent at the NBA's showcase store in midtown Manhattan.
But that surge, he says, isn't coming from resurrecting gear from bygone dynasties and stars: “The primary customer base is 16-24-year-old males. The products are all new to them. It's almost as if the more obscure the jersey is, the more appealing it is. It's very important for these kids to set themselves apart from the pack.”
One of the NBA's best-selling throwbacks is an Alex English jersey from the 1987-88 Denver Nuggets. LaRocca figures that's hot because of its design, which includes a silhouette of mountains, not because English averaged 25 points for a team that finished 54-28.
While retro sales have shot up, they still provide 10 percent, or less, of leagues' merchandising revenues.
But Brian Jennings, a National Hockey League group vice president for consumer products, argues that selling the past has a real future.
Jennings says the NHL teams, which haven't played games in retro jerseys since 1993, will frequently take the ice in throwback uniforms during the 2003-04 season. The league decided against doing that this coming season to make sure it had prepared related promotion.
That move assumes retro's resurgence has legs. And the NHL's Jennings is convinced: “There's an important distinction between a fad and a trend. A fad is a scooter. But a trend has traction. And this is a 'trend!' ”
Pop culture goes retro
Asked if he feels the retro is hot, Peter Capolino agrees “1,000 percent.”
He should know. He projects that sales for his Philadelphia-based Mitchell & Ness, which manufactures throwback gear for all four major sports leagues, could reach $20 million this year - up from just $4.5 million last year - and “it's all because of retro.”
Capolino says he's in “the history business,” and his 850 replica jerseys include real old-timers like the wool flannels worn by the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings. But Capolino, who also has a Philadelphia retail outlet, downplays the allure of the past: “We're not making all this money because of history. It's because of hip-hop.”
Capolino saw sales jump when hip-hop artists such as Jermaine Dupree, Big Boi and Sean Combs began wearing retro jerseys - a trend picking up momentum when more mainstream celebrities such as Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant started wearing replicas of decades-old jerseys.
Capolino, whose customers included some of the hip-hop who sparked the trend, says those fashion trailblazers often had a mundane motivation: They wanted jerseys from the teams they liked as kids. “I don't think they even realized they were starting a trend,” Capolino says. “But millions of kids saw their music videos. And I didn't just have a sleepy company anymore.”
That was a lucky break for the leagues, with merchandise businesses needing a new beat. Total retail sales for the major leagues and big-time colleges, says the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, peaked at $13.8 billion in 1996 and declined each year to reach about $11.5 billion in 2001. (Leagues, generally, keep about 10 percent of the wholesale price, and those revenues are distributed evenly to teams.)
And leagues and their merchandisers might be swimming in wider fashion currents. Outside sports, says John Mather, fashion director for “Men's Journal” magazine, “vintage is huge. Even Victoria's Secret added more antique vintage stuff and couldn't keep it on the shelves.”
Andrea Linett, fashion director for “Lucky” magazine, says women buying throwback shoes reminiscent of the 1970s have become so common that “it's not even ironic anymore.”
The retro look might be the closest the sports world gets to such fashion sensibilities. Matt O'Toole, chief executive of The Hockey Company, which makes hockey jerseys, still has his “traditional market” where the numbers and numbers on jerseys “mean everything” to fans pursuing “fond memories” of their youth.
But he also sees “an almost opposite phenomenon” as some urban retailers calling to order specific jersey styles, say the player name and number simply don't matter. “The kids buying them aren't connected to any of that,” O'Toole says. “Just whether it's cool.”
The NBA's LaRocca sees something “haute” in the retro craze: “This is like Armani's special collection, like 'couture'.”
Fashion in the "mind of the beholder'
For years, pro teams have occasionally put their teams on field in retro uniforms.
But for its annual doubleheader on Thanksgiving Day, a perfect marketing platform as the next day is usually the biggest shopping day of the year, the NFL will go all out. All four teams will wear throwback uniforms, says NFL senior vice president Mark Saltzman, and even coaches on the sidelines will wear new stuff meant to look old; Saltzman calls it a “contemporized classic look.”
And, just in case it's overlooked, Saltzman says the NFL will use “contextual selling” - taking first-half video footage of the vintage clothes and using it in instant second-half TV ads.
And Reebok, which this year will make the jerseys for all NFL teams, is looking beyond resurrecting league gear. It is also reintroducing its 1987 Pro Legacy, a white, gold and black basketball shoe worn by NBA players probably best known to today's teens as TV announcers or coaches: Danny Ainge and Doc Rivers, for example.
But Steve Gardner, director of Reebok Classic products, says the shoe can still play in today's market.
“It has appealing little touches that make it look like it's from another era - like an embossed faux reptile collar,” Gardner says. “And its colors work because this whole trend is bold and vibrant in terms of color.”
One man's bold and vibrant, of course, can be another's mess. Capolino says his top-sellers include Dave Winfield's old San Diego Padres jersey — “it's that ugly mustard and brown, but the youth of America loves it” — and an old Willie Stargell Pittsburgh Pirates jersey, “one of the all-time uglies.”
And he's not personally enamored with Nolan Ryan's 1980 Houston Astros jersey that retails for $325, which is “one of the ugliest baseball jerseys ever made” — but also Capolino's top seller.
Go figure. But then, fashion is often in the mind of the beholder. Which means that sports merchandisers face something that has put some spice in their lives.
“With a trend like this, God knows where it starts, why it starts of where it will finish,” says baseball's Smith. “The dust hasn't even settled. But I'm guessing it has another year at this velocity.”
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Sports gear so out of style it's in style
