When news of Cristiano Ronaldo’s knee injury came out earlier this week, a set of shop owners at Pulimoodu in the city were almost as worried as the fans of the Portugal football team.
“One out of three kids who come here ask for Ronaldo’s jersey. But if a player gets injured and ends up not participating in any of the matches, the sales of jerseys bearing his name will also stop. No one would want to be seen wearing the jersey of a player sitting on the benches,” says R.S. Nair, owner of Malabar sports.
Pulimoodu is where a majority of the sports goods shops are located, and these shop owners were expecting jersey and football sales to shoot up with the World Cup a week away. But with new stocks yet to arrive and the monsoon round the corner, things are as exciting as a goalless draw.
New stock soon“We have a few jerseys left from the old stock. Since Brazil and Argentina jerseys are perpetually popular, we always keep these stocked, and people buy these even during the off season. The rest of the stock will probably arrive in a week’s time and the demand will rise once the matches begin,” says S. Dileep, owner of Century Sports.
The jerseys, priced between Rs.130 and Rs.400, are sourced mostly from manufacturers at Angamaly and Kottakkal and a few other wholesalers in Madurai and Trichy. The boots are mostly from Nivia’s facility in Jalandhar. The delay in the announcement of the final teams and finalising of the official jerseys has resulted in the manufacturers delaying the printing of the jerseys.
“We usually wait for the various teams to unveil their final designs and then make little tweaks to these and print them. Exact replicas cannot be done as original manufacturers can sue us. We use the sublimation machine for digital printing of the jerseys, flags, scarves, and caps. Prints are made of only the top 10 countries. This year, customers have been asking for Belgium jerseys too. Consignments of the old designs have already been shipped to the northern districts. But there has been feeble response from the southern districts, unlike last time,” says Jose Paul, marketing manager of Spring Apparels at Angamaly. Besides the jerseys, there is demand for replicas of ‘Brazuca,’ the official ball of the tournament.
“The replicas are cheap and you can get those for around Rs.300. We have ordered for a few originals which are priced at Rs.8,000. Hopefully, there will be a few takers,” says Zakir of Sports Land.
Meanwhile, the franchisees of biggies like Puma, Nike, and Adidas have already geared up for the big show. The Puma showroom has two special racks for Brazil and Italy, their teams of focus this year.
But the prices at these shops (which start from Rs.2,000) mean that only the diehard and the well-heeled will depend on them.
