2020 Adidas Swag Thread

BuzzThePlumber

Helluva Engineer
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1,205
Sure wish the gold sweatshirt was available online somewhere. I don't understand why Adidas would not want to sell it at Fanatics, if it was not going to be available through the online school bookstore?
I think that it's just not that thoroughly thought out. Also, it may still end up on Fanatics, the items keep trickling in--the Fall release will probably drag on even longer than usual this year because of Covid related supply chain issues.
 

AlabamaBuzz

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Hartselle, AL (originally Rome, GA)
I think that it's just not that thoroughly thought out. Also, it may still end up on Fanatics, the items keep trickling in--the Fall release will probably drag on even longer than usual this year because of Covid related supply chain issues.


I will be surprised if Fanatics ever offers it, because it seems like that site avoids our gold stuff in general. But, I hope you are right. I still don't understand why the bookstore can't let me call in an order for that item? I know that it is a different "entity" than the "online' store, but they still ship from the same location.
 

GT flunkout

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
367
I will be surprised if Fanatics ever offers it, because it seems like that site avoids our gold stuff in general. But, I hope you are right. I still don't understand why the bookstore can't let me call in an order for that item? I know that it is a different "entity" than the "online' store, but they still ship from the same location.

I've noticed the same with Fanatics which is strange. The last time they stocked any kind of gold hat was around 2015.
 

chris975d

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
903
I will be surprised if Fanatics ever offers it, because it seems like that site avoids our gold stuff in general. But, I hope you are right. I still don't understand why the bookstore can't let me call in an order for that item? I know that it is a different "entity" than the "online' store, but they still ship from the same location.
From the little info I seem to have gathered in talking to people (both at the bookstore, and people that work for Adidas...aka sales reps), the general thought seems to be that any gold stuff primarily goes to our bookstore, because if gold is going to sell decently at all, it will do so there among our students and game day attendees. Navy is still far and away the better seller in general, so I can see Fanatics/fanatics owned sites having more of it. It may even be a situation where our bookstore (Barnes and Noble) has some type of exclusivity on some of the gold/sand merch. If you pay close attention, often times a colorway of an item made in gold/sand is ONLY offered at the bookstore, while ****’s, Fanatics, etc get only the navy variant.
 

MidtownJacket

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Staff member
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4,800
From the little info I seem to have gathered in talking to people (both at the bookstore, and people that work for Adidas...aka sales reps), the general thought seems to be that any gold stuff primarily goes to our bookstore, because if gold is going to sell decently at all, it will do so there among our students and game day attendees. Navy is still far and away the better seller in general, so I can see Fanatics/fanatics owned sites having more of it. It may even be a situation where our bookstore (Barnes and Noble) has some type of exclusivity on some of the gold/sand merch. If you pay close attention, often times a colorway of an item made in gold/sand is ONLY offered at the bookstore, while ****’s, Fanatics, etc get only the navy variant.
Had noticed the same, but I do agree they need to solve for the problem of out of state fans trying to buy from the bookstore.
 

GT flunkout

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
367
From the little info I seem to have gathered in talking to people (both at the bookstore, and people that work for Adidas...aka sales reps), the general thought seems to be that any gold stuff primarily goes to our bookstore, because if gold is going to sell decently at all, it will do so there among our students and game day attendees. Navy is still far and away the better seller in general, so I can see Fanatics/fanatics owned sites having more of it. It may even be a situation where our bookstore (Barnes and Noble) has some type of exclusivity on some of the gold/sand merch. If you pay close attention, often times a colorway of an item made in gold/sand is ONLY offered at the bookstore, while ****’s, Fanatics, etc get only the navy variant.

It's chicken and egg. Just seems very intentional and very lazy.
 

chris975d

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
903
It's chicken and egg. Just seems very intentional and very lazy.
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.
 

Gold1

Helluva Engineer
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3,216
From the little info I seem to have gathered in talking to people (both at the bookstore, and people that work for Adidas...aka sales reps), the general thought seems to be that any gold stuff primarily goes to our bookstore, because if gold is going to sell decently at all, it will do so there among our students and game day attendees. Navy is still far and away the better seller in general, so I can see Fanatics/fanatics owned sites having more of it. It may even be a situation where our bookstore (Barnes and Noble) has some type of exclusivity on some of the gold/sand merch. If you pay close attention, often times a colorway of an item made in gold/sand is ONLY offered at the bookstore, while ****’s, Fanatics, etc get only the navy variant.
my theory on that is that the companies like Dicks and Fanatics don't even know that our main look we prefer is white and gold. They honestly probably think we are a navy school. That's where GT is supposed to come in.
 

MidtownJacket

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4,800
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.
I get this.. I really do. I am also not part of the MUST BE GOLD Crew. I don't mind Navy and the other pieces. Having said that, I don't understand (given our Global Footprint of Alum living situations) why we don't have better online purchase avenues through the Bookstore. Barnes and Noble may suck, they may have agreements in place that prevent us from fixing the larger systemic issues, but my lord we should be able to get to the point of selling to the largest potential customer footprint.

To your point, if GT wants to sell Gold, to appease the fanbase, AND Adidas doesn't want to make it because of volume concerns, wouldn't it logically follow that GT would open the gates as wide as possible to reach the best distribution of potential buyers?

Also, I am not trying to put you into the unenviable position of defending the merchandising and distribution strategy GT has taken, but am interested in your thoughts as they are informed by your experience.
 
Messages
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Augusta, GA
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.
I obviously can't dispute anything you say, but in years past, there was never any problem finding plenty of gold gear. It's only in the past 10 years that blue has taken over. What happened?
 

boger2337

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3,331
I think there is a rather large elephant in the room....

Is it possible that outside of this forum, most people purchase and prefer the navy colored clothing? We see it as die hards, which we are... we are on a forum daily for GT athletics. Is it possible the other 750k+ fans prefer the navy? Or at least a large portion of them? I'd be willing to bet the average age of person on this forum is over 45. While the average age of the people purchasing products are probably 40 and under.

I love the Gold stuff as much as anyone on here. But I do find that if I'm going out, I gravitate to a darker color to "flatter" my man lumps better than Gold/sand. Being a peach colored guy, gold doesn't necessarily make me look better 😂🤣. I love it for game day, and I would LOVE a gold jersey I'd wear it once a week haha. But I just tend to think their reasoning has some financial facts and just pure market research that navy is needed to carry the lighter colors of gold and white. Most people also tend to wear darker colors.
 
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