Messi’s pink shirt becomes a fever that crosses continents – 10/28/2023 – Sport

Lionel Messi’s pink Inter Miami shirt is everywhere. It has become almost impossible to acquire it, but there it is, paradoxically, on the backs of thousands of fans who fill North American stadiums, hanging from market stalls in Bangkok and Buenos Aires, on almost every field where children gather to play football in England.

The fact that the jersey has become, seemingly overnight, the hottest piece of sports merchandise on the planet is a simple capitalist equation. The result is an irresistible combination: one of the most recognizable and beloved athletes of his generation; a distinct, exotic color; and the relentless efficiency of Southeast Asian textile factories.

However, few people predicted this. Tor Southard was better positioned than most, but was still caught by surprise. As Adidas’ senior director of soccer in North America, he had been receiving emails from colleagues for nearly a year asking whether the company’s biggest star, Messi, would play for fellow Adidas client Inter Miami.

As far as he knew, they were just rumors. Like the rest of the planet, Southard discovered it was true only on June 7, the day the star announced his intentions in a rare interview with two Spanish news outlets.

Within days, the company received nearly 500,000 orders from stores and suppliers for shirts in Miami’s soft, electric pink color. It’s a specific fabric and a specific shade: Pantone 1895C. “It’s not like it’s white and we have stock that we can reuse,” Southard said.

Adidas would need more of that fabric. A lot more.

‘Priority number 1’

On the day Messi announced he would sign with Inter Miami, Adidas had a stock of the team’s jerseys in stores and storage facilities across the United States. It didn’t last.

Getting the fabric to make more was just the first step. Although Adidas could not sell Messi’s official shirts until his contract was formally signed, which occurred on July 15, it placed orders for huge rolls of the pink fabric needed to make them following the athlete’s interview with Spanish television. in the first week of June.

The risk was that the agreement could still fall apart.

Under normal circumstances, retailers order shirts up to nine months in advance. Big sporting goods brands like Adidas and Nike often prefer to produce large batches of team equipment rather than manufacturing to meet demand as fast fashion chains often do.

Adidas knew its usual plan wouldn’t work.

In 2021, when Cristiano Ronaldo returned to Manchester United, one of the few retailers Adidas works with, Fanatics, ordered an additional 1 million shirts. A year later, when Messi helped Argentina win the World Cup, Adidas had to produce and ship another 400,000 national team shirts over a three-month period.

Getting pink shirts with Messi’s name and number 10 onto the market, Southard said, immediately became “Adidas’ No. 1 priority, globally.”

To speed up the process, the company sourced the pink recycled polyester fabric for the shirts as close as possible to the Southeast Asian factories that would produce them. Orders for other details such as logos and crests were rushed to other facilities, sometimes skipping apparel production for other Adidas teams. To reduce delivery times, the first batches of Messi shirts were sent in small shipments, almost as soon as they left the production line.

The frantic production effort paid off. Initially, Adidas had told its retailers to start selling the shirts with the promise of delivery by October 15. But the first editions arrived in the United States on July 18th. They were shipped directly to Miami, where demand was greatest, and sold out almost instantly.

‘Everyone has a connection’

On a corner of the rich Brickell neighborhood in Miami, two young men set up a temporary store with Messi products. There were shelves full of Inter Miami shirts in pink and an alternative version – black with pink details – that the team wears away from home. This was the work of the store creatively titled Messi Miami Shop.

However, Messi Miami Shop had no affiliation with Messi, Inter Miami or Adidas. His shirts came from a contact in Thailand, purchased for US$10 (R$49.47) each. “This is Miami,” said one of the salespeople. “Everyone has a contact.” And a profit margin: the stall was selling the shirts for US$25 (R$123.68) for the children’s version and up to US$65 (R$321.58) for an “authentic” and fake version of the black shirt team’s.

The sellers, who declined to give their names for obvious reasons, said they sold about 30 in a few hours. But they’re not the only ones trying hard.

A few nights earlier, outside Orlando’s Exploria Stadium, a different group of street vendors were doing their own brisk business in Messi shirts. Lionel wasn’t playing that night due to injury, but Inter Miami was in town, and many fans were willing to pay $40 for a pink shirt with his name on it, even if it had bad stitching.

Despite all of Adidas’ attempts to get its official Messi shirts into stores as quickly as possible, the demand for them – any version of them – has been so great that fakes have flooded the global market to make up for the shortage.

In Buenos Aires, where Messi’s status as a national treasure was sealed by victory in the World Cup, there are pink shirts for sale in store after store and kiosk after kiosk along Calle Florida, one of the Argentine capital’s bustling shopping streets. and in the stalls of the busy San Telmo Market. At some sellers, fakes cost around US$50 (R$247.37).

Official sales exceeded all of Adidas’ expectations, Southard said: more than the frenzy that accompanied David Beckham’s move to the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2007; in addition to the rush caused by Cristiano Ronaldo’s return to Manchester United in 2021; in addition to the clamor for Messi’s own Argentina shirt after the Qatar World Cup.

Inter Miami is now Adidas’ best-selling football shirt in North America, ahead of the five traditional European clubs that the brand considers the crown jewels of its portfolio: Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus, Bayern and Arsenal.

On the Fanatics website, which dominates the sportswear market in the United States, no player in any sport sold more shirts than Messi in the first 24 hours after changing teams.

The star’s cinematic arrival in the United States – with a last-minute winning goal on his debut, on July 22 – only came too late to save Inter Miami’s season, which did not qualify for the MLS finals. Messi will not play in pink again until next year.