Merchandise massacre

What could have been a real showstopper with the fans flaunting their adorable Shera merchandise making the host country a perfect venue for spreading the excitement, offering the right prelude to kick start such a big event like Common Wealth Games (CWG), Organising Committee (OC) of CWG has doused all hopes by taking a totally messy approach towards this immense business opportunity.  From the very beginning OC has ill gauged the potential of merchandising and licensing, and floundered to release the merchandise, ultimately cutting a most pathetic figure in the world of sport, making themselves a loser despite so many successes achieved by the other countries through licensing and merchandising in games arena.  Where there was every possibility of 100 per cent hype and 100 per cent capitalisation, we have achieved 100 per cent failure and zero per cent capitalisation.

It is also understood that the licensing process has been jinxed from the very beginning when the OC had originally presented the merchandising RFP (Request For Proposal) in November 2009, and the tender was ultimately issued only in April 2010. The CWG 2010 merchandise was to hit the retail shelves in June 2010 but remained uselessly

locked up.

The premonition

The premonition had been showing up for quite a some time. For CWG’s licensing and merchandising partner, Premier Brands, was not happy with the way things had been proceeding, given the repeated withdrawals of the official launch of the CWG 2010 merchandise for four consecutive times.  The news was in the air that Premier Brands, a brand licensing organisation dedicated to product licensing, brand management, retail development and merchandising, was seriously considering to withdraw its association with CWG.

When we talk about FIFA and the upcoming London Olympics 2012, things are way better and much more organised. With two years to go for the event, a wide range of Olympic and Paralympic products are already up on the official website for the interested customers to grab. Also, in case of the Beijing Olympics, merchandising sales commenced almost three years prior to the event.

Even in the USA, where soccer is not that popular, sales of official FIFA merchandise crossed $35 million. The response in India had also been great with footfalls and sales in stores like Puma which offered an array of FIFA merchandise at their stores.

The manufacturer like writing instrument maker, Luxor, which reportedly entered into a licensing deal with regards to CWG licensed merchandise, expected that the sales to jump by up to 15 per cent at the time of the sporting extravaganza, but all these dreams are now proved to be in vain. The absence of original merchandise has now given space to counterfeits.

The opportunity that could have been reaped

With respective parties hesitant to comment in a chaotic situation like this and that too at the critical time when CWG 2010 is round the corner, we got in touch with a few retail experts to grasp what they think about this situation.

Mr Harish Bijoor, CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc, interestingly opines, “This is a big loss. The CWG games offer opportunities in the realm of licensing and merchandising of C2C items in a big way. This opportunity comes in three phases. The first phase is pre-games, the second phase is during the games and the third stage is after the games. In terms of the time tenure, the pre-games tenure is all of 24 months before the games, the game tenure is 45 days and the post event tenure is a small window of 30 days.”

Mr Devendra Chawla, Head-Private Brands, Future Group, comments, “Properties like World Cup, FIFA and CWG offer opportunities for brands in relevant categories like sports, including a lot of activations revolving their brands, and the merchandise not only generate extra revenue during these periods but also get the brands to connect with the consumers in new ways as these bursts of events can offer some great and out-of-the box opportunities.”

Total massacre

There were also plans for 70 outlets across the games venues and almost 200 stores across shopping malls, metro stations and airports, but all this is slowly coming to be realised as a set of wrong predictions! Further complicating things, Sports Marketing and Management Company (SMAM), which brought in the merchandising deal, is locked in a court case with the OC for the termination of their contract. What we have shown to the world?  The debacle doesn’t match with India’s newly earned strong image in the world economy. This is surely an ugly blotch on our image that will take some time to be erased off.

The SetBack

• The Organising Committee of the Common Wealth Games has incurred a huge loss giving a miss to earn Rs 800 million, with the withdrawl of Premier Brands’ lucrative licensing arrangement with the former.
• Premier Brands was left with no other option but to call it off since the situation would have made the company earn Rs 70 million against its investment of Rs 130 million. The success of the venture could earn the company an amount of Rs 200 million.