I don’t think it’s lazy, but again, I have been dealing with apparel companies for 20+ years, so I do understand their side as well. I won’t rehash in detail much of what I’ve said throughout numerous posts on here, but it’s always going to be a numbers game with a relatively unpopular (relative to others that apparel companies produce) color. Those gold materials/textiles that have to be produced to make gold apparel for us aren’t going to sell anywhere else in Adidas’ product line with any numbers...we (retailers) certainly aren’t blowing through them in the sports/performance apparel lines, certainly not the golf lineup, and not the casual/street wear categories. The only channel they are going to sell in is the teams sports channel. And look at the leftovers/close outs at the end of each season with any label with a team sports channel...Nike, Under Armour, Adidas, etc. “Team gold”, “Vegas gold”, etc (same basic color as our sand) is always, always left over. Same thing even when you get down to the smaller label companies like Gildan, Sport-Tek, Augusta Sportswear, etc.
Add to that the low (comparatively) numbers that I’ve heard are made for us. Just take our bookstore for example. If you frequent them enough and observe/talk to them, you can get a good idea of how much they sell or how much is produced. For example, that gold/sand pocketed crew neck I posted from last night....typically when the bookstore gets an apparel item, they put most of the stock out on the floor. There’s about 40 (give or take) of them on the sales floor. If you frequent the store (I'm not the usual customer I guess, as I'm there at least a few times a month), you can usually see that once a size is sold out of whatever is is floor stock, it’s gone for good, which would indicate there’s not much, if any backstock. But, for kicks and giggles, let’s say there is backstock. And let’s say it’s an absurdly high number like 10x of the sales floor stock, so that would put us near a total of 450 pieces for that one item. Even IF that were the case, that’s a stupidly low number of items for Adidas to concern themselves with producing, even if we sell every one of them (which we usually don’t, not until the remainders are close out priced). And when i say producing, i mean not only the actual gold garment, but i mean the material itself. The gold cloth that garment is made of. There's not a lot of demand in other sales channels for that gold material. But there is for white material, or navy blue material.
That's enough of me talking about this subject for now, as there are going to be people who insist I'm wrong, or that there can't possibly be more demand for any other color than gold. But it is what it is....none of these companies, especially Adidas, are going go forego producing gold GT gear if their data showed they were leaving a significant amount of money on the table. It just doesn't work that way.