Garments go for gold - Olympics-licensed clothing - AM Apparel Merchandising

Discount Store News, Sept 6, 1993 by Paul Demery

Like decathlon competitors who won only bronze or silver medals in past Olympics, apparel marketers are honing their strategies and suiting up to go for the gold.

Olympics of the past have left many retailers wondering what had tripped them up on the fast track to licensed apparel sales. Some chalk up the problems to uncoordinated groups of manufacturers that fumbled promotions and distributions, or to lack of home-turf excitement when the Games were either on foreign soil or, as in the case of the 1980 Moscow and 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games, tainted by international boycotts.

This time around it will be different. The 1996 Summer Games, marking the 100th anniversary of the modem Olympics, will be down home in Atlanta, where Olympic fever is already taking hold for a long run. You can bet retailers will be rooting for the Dream Team--and we're not just talking basketball.

Hanes and Champion, two units of the Sara Lee Corp.'s Personal Products Division, made merchandising history as a retailers? dream team when they signed on as the primary manufacturers of Olympic-licensed apparel for the U.S. Olympic Committee, responsible for knit activewear, for both the Winter and Summer Games.

The toddler-through-adult lineup offers a variety of screen-printed and embroidered Olympic logos--including the five rings, the torch, and U.S.A. teams--on outerwear, T-shirts, fleece, socks and underwear. As might be expected, Hanes is handling distribution for mass merchants, while higher-priced Champion goods are slated for department, sporting goods and specialty stores.

Sara Lee's foray into Olympics licensing gives it a launching pad for expanding its presence among retailers, furthering its goal for Hanes, especially, to become more then just an underwear supplier to a broad swath of mass merchants. The move also strengthens its uncommon position as a major supplier to both Kmart and Wal-Mart as well as to regional and local retailers. "Where we may be in underwear only, this would allow us the opportunity to move into activewear departments," says Joseph Zahran, Sara Lee's director of Olympics merchandising.

Sara Lee has invested $40 million as an Olympics sponsor. In addition, it has guaranteed the U.S. Olympic Committee at least $20 million in revenues from the sale of licensed apparel. In the meantime, the manufacturer's reputation as an astute marketer and distributor--it promises product replenishment on a 48-hour basis--has planted seeds of hope among merchants, who expect to see a significant improvement over past Olympics.

"The last time around, you were buying an item without a promotional plan to go with it, and the deliveries were kind of difficult," says Matt Sudhalter, merchandise manager at Franklin, Mass.-based discounter Stuarts Department Stores. "Before we knew it, the Olympics were over and we were just getting Olympics merchandise. We had to mark it down."

But with Hanes's "marketing savvy," he predicts, retailers can expect the sales marathon begun in Atlanta to continue throughout the U.S.

True to its role in this case of a manufacturer driving a particular retail category, Sara Lee started planning specific strategies with Kmart and Wal-Mart earlier in the year to accommodate each retailer's desire to have unique merchandising campaigns. Although smaller merchants have expressed some frustration on launching their own Olympics plans--"we can't do anything until we know what they're doing," says Sudhalter--Sara Lee says it will try to assist even the smallest of stores.

"We know they'll make it exciting," says Richard Toback, divisional merchandise manager for Norwalk, Conn.-based Caldor, noting that he hopes to have initial deliveries in time for the coming holiday season.

Initial sales in sporting goods stores, meanwhile, have already perked aggressive plans.

"We'll play it up big in all parts of the country," says Jack Smith, president of The Sports Authority. In Atlanta, the retailer's Olympic-licensed T-shirts started moving like world-class runners right after the city was named nearly two years ago as the site for the 1996 Games.

Gus Horianopoulos, the Atlanta district manager for five (soon to be seven) The Sports Authority stores, says that, in addition to T-shirts, fleece and socks, he's already selling a variety of small accessories ranging from sports water bottles and coffee mugs to automobile license-plate holders. For now, he's displaying the accessories near store entrances and checkout counters, but later this year will also place them alongside apparel in Olympic shops measuring 500-600 square feet. Since debuting in his stores, Olympics apparel has been displayed according to type and color coordinations on four-way and six-way racks under signs that simply say "Olympics." Sales have been good, though shoppers have been buying Olympics apparel on impulse rather than as a destination item. "For the most part, it's add-on sales," Horianopoulos says.

As it gets closer to Christmas and the '94 Winter Games, he predicts, Olympic-logoed products will get a life of their own nurtured in a shop offering various display options.