SCRIBBLER
Scribbler
Our regular columnist takes a sideways look at the printwear industry and the world at large, with an eagle eye on some new opportunities for business
Double top
Oddly, nobody appears to know how many pub darts teams there are in the country, certainly not the BDO or Justin Irwin, who is a published author on the sport and regarded as something of a fount of all dartish knowledge. Certainly there are fewer teams than there were, although brewers John Smith are attempting to revitalise the sport in pubs with a national competition that offers the winner sponsorship in BDO competitions. Here, I suggest, is a business opportunity of major proportions – similar to the proportions of a professional darts player. There are leagues in every corner of the country, with teams surely crying out for team strips. Step up to the oche, folks.
agencies who expected me to be at a forthcoming three letter acronym exhibition. Unfortunately, I’d never heard of the former and had to check the venue to work out the latter – a show I went to once, seven years ago (and wouldn’t go back to, no matter how thirsty). E-mail is so easy to use but if your database is out of date and you use industry jargon, you do yourself more harm than good.
Englishmen advance
Three English golfers in the world’s top ten rankings promises well for the sport in this country, which in turn should help sell more clothing through pro- shops. The industry can be particularly pleased that fifth on that list is Ian Poulter who has previously been noted less for his golf than for his dramatic taste in on-course apparel. If he could just contrive to win a major dressed in cross of Saint George colours, sales would be off the graph.
Own goal in rugby
The RFU celebrated the 100th anniversary of Twickenham internationals by kitting out the team in traditional strip with subtle logos. They produced just 2000 of said shirts, which were snapped up in jig time. The lucky buyers have made a canny purchase since they were almost immediately selling for over £250 on e-bay. This demonstrates a sackful of business opportunities. First, there is real demand out there for a classic England shirt – the rose emblem came in lots of different forms in the early days, incidentally; second, creating a short-run product is an investment opportunity for buyers; third, the RFU are still the same 57 old farts Will Carling called them because they could have sold tens of thousands of those shirts. Some canny operator should buy the rights to produce and sell those tens of thousands.
Step up to the oche - there's good money to be made on darts team strips.
Local news blackout
Local newspapers are in serious – perhaps terminal – decline. The process has been a steady one but thanks to the recession it has accelerated – lack of advertising for cars and property at the same time hit local papers very hard. Media experts are bewailing the fact that this will prevent scrutiny of local issues which would never hit the nationals. It is also bad news for small businesses, many of which rely on advertising in the local paper for business building. There’s a Catch 22 here: if people aren’t reading it why advertise? On the other hand, if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it.
World Cup woes
The past few weeks have seen a set of spokes put into the wheel of the England team’s hopes for South Africa. Having to replace the captain was a bad start. Then injury and more off-field shenanigans have put the skids under our world class left back. Let us hope that everybody’s got their metatarsals well wrapped.
How not to do it
I received an email offering me a free drink, which is one of the very best ways to get my attention. It came from one of those three letter acronym
| 68 | April 2010
And the website award goes to…
the printwear industry. I have recently been asked to look at a host of websites for the purpose of recommending best practise for another unrelated business sector and I have to say that the quality of sites from printwear businesses is excellent. You don’t realise this until you look at some of the dross that is on the web - from some pretty big organisations, too. The products (and the cute models of both sexes) help make printwear sites bright and interesting, of course, but it’s the ease of navigation and good planning of content that stands out. Given the huge range, most printwear companies offer plus all the colours and sizes, the potential for an unholy mess is considerable and everybody I looked at has solved that problem. If you’re not as good, get it sorted.
www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk
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