Have the Nigels stolen another march over us with their new up market merch? The Financial Times is sceptical.
Writing in the Pink 'Un Jo Ellison notes:'News that Crystal Palace have become the first football club in the Premier League to appoint a creative director was greeted by most of their fan base with a shrug. “Can he play at right back?” was among the more popular responses.
Kenny Annan-Jonathan, a “brand architect” who founded the
sports marketing agency The Mailroom in 2017, has been enlisted to oversee
apparel collections and fashion brand partnerships at the south London club. He
has previously worked with former Palace winger Wilfried Zaha, who recently
left the club after a nine-season spell, as well as West Ham’s Michail Antonio
and the sprinter Daryll Neita.
Annan-Jonathan says he will create “products that go beyond
typical sports team merch and grow the team’s fan base”. His first collection
will debut in September. Would you consider wearing Crystal Palace merch
if you weren’t an Eagles fan? They finished mid-table last season and are
relatively unknown as an international brand. Palace haven’t enjoyed huge
fashionability since Ian Wright and Mark Bright were a dazzling goalscoring
partnership. But that was in the 1980s.
And notwithstanding that I am a blood relative of a season
ticket-holding, diehard member of the Eagles brethren, I imagine the club will
struggle to become much more than a niche interest in an arena awash with
bigger, more explosive brands.'
One can easily think of merch one could devise for Millwall fans. Perhaps Charlton could do a line in anoraks or those old fashioned sports jackets favoured by train spotters?
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