By BRIAN MONROE
Florida Today

NASCAR fans have a lot of choices when it comes to buying merchandise of their favorite drivers.

There are hats and shirts, jackets and flags, posters and coasters. You can buy miniature cars, small bobblehead drivers and even full-size limited-edition automobiles.

But there is one thing the selection had been missing: a feminine touch.

That is about to change with the organization's licensing deal with a Los Angeles clothing manufacturer to make NASCAR-branded clothes for women - including pants, shorts, shirts and miniskirts.

That pleases one Palm Bay, Fla., woman who has been a fan for nearly 20 years.

"NASCAR finally woke up and realized that women like racing too," said Michele Zorbis, a fan of driver Bill Elliot. "If there are things cut for a woman and not geared toward men, more women will buy them. When we go out, we don't want to look like one of the boys. We want to look like a woman."

The marketing change could mean more revenues for NASCAR, which last year had $1.3 billion in overall licensed merchandise sales, when things such as apparel are included. It is the No. 3 sport merchandiser, behind the NFL and NCAA.

NASCAR estimates that 40 percent of its 75 million fans are women.

For NASCAR merchants, that's not a surprise.

"When I first started off, I had more women buying stuff than men," said Don Frier, who has owned the store Racin' Fans in Titusville, Fla., for nearly six years.

He has noticed a larger selection for women in catalogs and he has started stocking some of those items.

"Now, NASCAR has a lot of ladies' clothing," he said. "They are marketing more toward women than they used to. And I believe women appreciate that because they can finally buy some clothes that fit them, pick out some shirts and pajama sets."

Frier said he has noticed that his male and female customers tend to have a fundamentally different type of buying pattern. For instance, he sees that men tend to go more for things like shirts, flags and die cast cars, while women went more for the "trinket" type of items, like candles, cups and some ornament-oriented fare.

"I know men get excited about NASCAR," Frier said. "But some women get excited about it even more."

Exactly, said Marci Thompson, the store manager for Victory Circle in Melbourne, Fla.

"The demand for some of the ladies' apparel is just endless," she said. "There are ladies' tank tops, pajamas, five different polo shirts, purses, sunglasses and wallets. It's just tremendous what they are doing with women's stuff."

In three years, Thompson said, the percentage of male to female customers has changed from 90 percent men and 10 percent women, to roughly 60 percent men and 40 percent women.

"Men come in here looking for women's stuff, too, for wives and mothers," Thompson said. "I am getting a lot more women that come in here and like to stand around and talk. The men used to come in here like it was a bar, and now it's the ladies hanging out."

Being able to get her favorite driver's latest merchandise tailored to her tastes is a welcome change for Mary Kammerude, a self-proclaimed "huge" fan of Jeff Gordon and his No. 24 Chevrolet Monte Carlo.

The Cape Canaveral, Fla., resident and owner of MK Bookkeeping has turned her office into a Jeff Gordon shrine, lined floor to ceiling with a colorful array of collectibles of all shapes and sizes.

"I think the new items for women will sell very well," said Kammerude, who recently bought a set of pink Jeff Gordon pajamas. "Some women will be crazy for the new merchandise because they have been waiting so long. It's not just buying the die-cast stuff. It's something you can wear and say, 'Look what I got."'