Phillies merchandise won't repeat sales success
Maybe it's the price of success, but T-shirts and hats don't sell quite as well when a team wins multiple championships.
Phillies merchandise won't repeat sales success
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
As fun as it has been to follow the Philadelphia Phillies race to repeat as world champs, there’s one thing the team probably won’t duplicate: whopping merchandise sales.
Matt Powell, an analyst with SportsOneSource, which tracks the sporting goods industry, said sales of Phillies T-shirts, hats and other merchandise are “way off” from last year. But that’s a typical pattern for teams that produce multiple championships, he said.
While it’s too early for final figures, sales of Phillies merchandise for the last four weeks are down more than two-thirds versus last year, Powell said.
After all, how many Ryan Howard jerseys do you need?
Born in bad times
One of the counterintuitive factoids I’ve heard during this damaging downturn is that recessions are a great time to start a company.
To support the notion, some experts trot out Microsoft and Apple as examples of two that got their start during the malaise of the ’70s. However, not every small business becomes a household name with a market capitalization in the many billions of dollars.
I asked Dane Stangler, a senior analyst at the entrepreneurship think tank Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, about the unconventional wisdom. He said survival rates of companies born during the last four recessions are no different from those launched during economic expansions.
In fact, the United States pretty consistently creates about 500,000 new businesses every year, he said. Most of them don’t survive to see their fifth birthday, so the nation needs a steady rate of new-company formation.
This year is likely to be no different. Stangler projects that more than 500,000 people will plunge into the entrepreneurial soup in 2009.
Quotable
To me, Atlantic City is in a long-term death spiral. They just don’t have what they need to compete with the local-option slot machines that are cropping up all over the place.
Dennis I. Forst, gaming analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets, in an interview Thursday about the casino industry on Bloomberg Radio.
Comment removed.
What the heck are you talking about James? That made no sense whatsoever.— Ed the Head- Watch that sales number change if they win this year.— pizano13
- James- All that typing for a completely incoherent comment that made no sense whatsoever.— Ed the Head
- Stop picking on James! If your going to be nitpicky, Ed the Head, you made your point with the first post....no need to post twice!— nmalone68
- I guess it's to be expected when the uniforms and logo are the same as last year.Unless you have an endless supply of frontrunner fans— Mon
- Great my laptop submitted my comment before i was done so it may not be understood.Oh well James and i can start a club.— Mon
- If sales figures are down by 1/3 over last year, then by my figuring, it will be 2/3 in 2010, and down to zero in 2011. That could be the reason teams rarely repeat titles anymore.— Ed Circusitch
- I also want to add, I would also join the James and Mon Club too. I would like Ed the Head to be the head of it.— Ed Circusitch
Mike Armstrong blogs about Philadelphia corporations and business-related topics. Contact him at 215-854-2980.
Reach Mike at marmstrong@phillynews.com.
