Name-Dropped Products and Souvenirs

Helping Fans Show (From page 82)

Swamp Shop, the Walleyes’ flagship fan store, and the Tackle Box, a smaller retail location. “We have four different styles of jerseys, and they all do extremely well,” Katz said. The Walleye is part of the Central Division of the Western Conference of the ECHL, which approves all product licensing. “Throughout the season, we’ll do multiple special edition jerseys— the ECHL is league partners with DC Comics, Marvel Comics, and Nickelodeon. We will also create alternate jerseys in-house for special events, and they also sell well,” he added.

Visibility and promotion are top tips for selling licensed products. Social media and promoting items online have been invaluable marketing tools for retailers. “The Cubs are our Number One best-selling team, and Number Two would be general Wrigley Field merchandise for visiting fans. It’s a big destination. A lot of other teams’ fans come in and want field merchandise. And usually, it’s whatever team is doing well. The [Chicago] Bulls are doing well right now, so we’re selling a lot of Bulls merchandise,” Carlstrom explained. “We used to be able to market items and sell them online. The League put in restrictions and limited what we could do with that. With the Cubs merchandise—a lot of it is placement within the store. We make sure items are in a good spot and always stocked on the shelves. We have a lot of people walking by, so we make sure the stuff that catches the eye is right by the window.” Rogers cautioned retailers about reading labels carefully: “Make sure you are buying the officially licensed products. Don’t get sticker shock—if you don’t, you take the chance of buying counterfeit goods, and no one wants to sell that! Make sure you’re only buying the officially licensed product. Most of the professional leagues put a hologram on the item’s tag.” Katz utilizes different marketing platforms to promote the Swamp Shop’s newest merchandise. “We use a lot of social media to promote products when they come in. We’ll create in-store displays highlighting certain products so fans see them quickly and easily. I’ll also put ads on the ribbon boards and video board to highlight special items or special jerseys,” he said.

Arranging creative, eye-catching displays also help to boost sales. “Display is key,” Rogers said. “You have to make it easy for people. Having a good, colorful, eye-catching display is a massive part of selling. We have all of our hats together in a 20-foot section, then they are broken down by sport, then by team nickname.” Mianecki also utilizes grouping when arranging displays: “All of our player jerseys are on the wall and blocked off nicely. We do a setup with player jerseys, then jerseys with no names.” Carlstrom said they group items and put them in key locations around the store. “It depends on the type of item. We try to keep our teams together. We’re getting new Cubs things in, so we’ll move the other teams around. A lot of it is how much room we have for other teams.”

Katz said, “If we want the attention on a specific item or type of items, we’ll do something creative, like make a pyramid of hockey pucks. On special event nights, we’ll put that merchandise front and center so it’s the first thing fans see when they come into the store. An effective display is eye-catching, easy to shop, maybe it has signage. What makes it eye-catching is how it’s displayed, like a pyramid of pucks, a mannequin wearing one of the jerseys, or something different to catch customers’ attention.”

Retailers’ goal is customer satisfaction. “We provide world-class customer service. At the end of the day, nothing we sell is a necessity, and customers could order it online if they wanted to,” Mianecki said. “Our customer service starts the minute a customer walks in the store. We stop what we’re doing to wait on the customer. We have a lot of lifelong customers who are loyal to us specifically.” Carlstrom said accommodating customers’ needs and requests are key elements of Wrigleyville Sports’ service philosophy: “If customer wants to return something past its return date, we’re accommodating,” he said. “Being a smaller company, it’s important to keep customers coming back. [We] do what we can to keep them happy.” Rogers said, “We try our best to take care of our customers’ needs as best we can, and we try to identify where we come up short. We look forward to seeing people visit our brick-and-mortar location. We appreciate all of our customers.”

Excellent customer service at the store is all part of giving fans a great experience at a game. “[Our philosophy is] to attend every customer—attend their needs and make sure they walk out happy,” Katz said. “We try to make ourselves very available to answer questions. If they don’t see a certain size, they might ask if we have it in the warehouse. It’s also about educating the fans on some of the products.” ❖