2023-10-24 18:59:54
Suddenly, after just one summer, the pink t-shirt is everywhere. It has become almost impossible to acquire, but there it is, paradoxically, on the backs of thousands of fans who pack the American stadiums, hanging from the stalls in the markets of Buenos Aires and Bangkok, a living sparkle in almost all the fields where it is played. children gather to play soccer in England.
The fact that the t-shirt has become, seemingly overnight, the fashionable sports item on the entire planet is a simple capitalist equation: the result of an irresistible combination of one of the best-known and most beloved athletes in his generation, an exotic and distinctive color and the ruthless efficiency of Southeast Asian textile factories.
However, few saw it coming. Tor Southard was better placed to know this than most, but even he was caught off guard. As Adidas’ senior director of soccer in North America, he had been receiving emails for almost a year from colleagues asking if the company’s biggest star, Lionel Messi, would join Inter Miami, also an Adidas client.
As far as he knew, it was just a rumor. Like the rest of the planet, Southard didn’t find out it was true until June 7, the day Messi announced his intentions in an unusual interview with two Spanish newspapers.
For many, the immediate question was football. Six months after winning the World Cup with Argentina, why would Messi, the best player of his generation and possibly the best of all time, leave Europe’s elite clubs and tournaments to join a team that was among the worst in the main league in the United States, equivalent to a wasteland, Major League Soccer?
For Southard, and for Adidas, there was a much more pressing issue. A couple of days after Messi’s announcement, the company had received almost 500,000 requests from stores and suppliers for shirts in the soft, electric pink of Miami. It is a specific fabric and shade: Pantone 1895C. “It’s not like it was white, and we had stock that we could reuse,” Southard said.
Although they couldn’t foresee what a phenomenon the T-shirt would become, or how many people would clamor to get their hands on one, Southard and his colleagues had an idea of what was about to happen. Adidas was going to need more of that fabric. Much more.
“Priority number one”
The day Messi announced he would sign with Inter Miami, Adidas had stock of the team’s jersey in stores and warehouses across the United States. It didn’t last long. The T-shirts sold so quickly that Southard said it seemed like the inventory just “evaporated.”
Getting the fabric to make more—and quickly—was just the first step. Although Adidas would not begin selling official Messi jerseys until his contract was formally signed on July 15, it placed huge orders for rolls of the pink fabric needed to make them within 24 hours of his interview with Spanish media in the first week of June.
The risk, of course, was that the deal would fall apart. “It is a risk that is made for the sake of speed,” Southard said.
Under normal circumstances, retailers order shirts up to nine months in advance. Large sportswear brands, such as Adidas and Nike, often prefer to produce large batches of clothing per team, rather than manufacturing to meet demand, as fast fashion chains often do.
Due to the number of what the industry calls “chase buys” — a sudden influx of orders in unforeseen volumes — for Inter Miami’s Messi jersey, Adidas knew its usual tactics wouldn’t work.
He had learned it from experience. In 2021, when Cristiano Ronaldo returned to Manchester United, one of the few retailers Adidas works with, Fanatics, ordered a million more shirts. A year later, after Messi helped Argentina win the World Cup, Adidas had to produce and ship 400,000 extra Argentine national team jerseys in a three-month span.
Getting pink jerseys with Messi’s name and number 10 on them hit the market, Southard said, immediately became Adidas’ “number one priority, globally.”
To streamline the process, the company sourced the pink, recycled polyester fabric for the T-shirts as close as possible to the Southeast Asian factories that would make them. Orders for other details, such as logos and badges, were expedited at other facilities, sometimes ahead of production of apparel for other Adidas teams. To reduce delivery times, the first batches of Messi shirts were sent in small batches, almost as soon as they left the production line.
The frenetic production effort worked. 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 18. They were shipped directly to Miami, where demand was greatest. They sold out almost instantly.
“Everyone has a contact”
One afternoon last month, on a corner of the affluent Brickell neighborhood in Miami, two young people had set up an ephemeral Messi store, with its shelves full of pink Inter Miami jerseys and an alternative version—black with pink details—that the team uses as a visitor. It had the imaginative name of Messi Miami Shop.
The name sounds official. The online store seems that way too. It sells two versions of the Messi jersey, as most sportswear manufacturers now do: a “player version” made with high-quality material and an athletic cut, and a “replica” designed for fans whose bodies might They do not have the precise dimensions of an elite athlete.
The Messi Miami Shop is in no way affiliated with Messi, Inter Miami or Adidas. (But it is a store). His t-shirts come, however, from a contact in Thailand, purchased for $10 each. “This is Miami,” said one of the salespeople. “Everyone has a contact.” And a premium: the stand sold children’s size t-shirts for $25 and the “authentic” adult version of the team’s black t-shirt for $65.
The sellers, who declined to give their names for reasons that should be obvious, had sold about 30 T-shirts in a couple of hours, they said. But they are not the only ones who seek a life like this. A few nights earlier, outside Exploria Stadium in Orlando, Florida, a different group of street vendors did their own business selling Messi jerseys. Messi wasn’t playing that night—he missed several weeks of the season with an injury—but Inter Miami was in town, and many fans were willing to pay $40 for a pink jersey with their name on it, even if it had shoddy stitching. and they will take it out of a backpack.
Despite all of Adidas’s efforts to get its official Messi jerseys into stores as soon as possible, the demand for them – any version of them – has been so great that counterfeits have flooded the global market to cope with the shortage.
Although the company says it is already up to date with many of its pending orders, it has found that it is still selling T-shirts much faster than it can produce them, and not just in the United States.
In Buenos Aires, where the World Cup victory has sealed Messi’s status as a national treasure, there are pink jerseys for sale in store after store and kiosk after kiosk along Florida Street, one of the busiest shopping streets in Buenos Aires. the capital of Argentina, and in the stalls of the bustling San Telmo Market. At some stalls, fakes cost about $50.
In Europe, where tribal affiliations with local clubs run deep, Miami jerseys have suddenly become commonplace. At a training session for primary school children last month in Manchester, England, the usual concentration of Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool uniforms was dotted with a half-dozen pink Inter Miami shirts, each with the Messi’s name.
It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of the demand. According to Southard, official sales have exceeded all of Adidas’s expectations: more than the frenzy that accompanied David Beckham’s signing by the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2007; more than the fever caused by Ronaldo’s return to Manchester United in 2021; more than the clamor for the Argentina shirt with Messi’s name after Qatar 2022.
Inter Miami’s is now the best-selling Adidas soccer jersey in North America, ahead of the five historic European clubs that the brand traditionally considers the crown jewels of its catalog: Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus, Bayern Munich and Arsenal.
Since July, Fanatics, which dominates sportswear sales in the United States, has sold more Messi jerseys than any other soccer player, and any other athlete except Jalen Hurts, the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback. No player, in any sport, has sold more shirts on the website in the first 24 hours after changing teams than Messi in July.
His cinematic arrival in MLS — scoring a late goal in his debut on July 22 — came too late to save Inter Miami’s season. The club did not make it to the playoffs, which begin on Wednesday. Messi will not play in pink again until next year. But that has done little to dispel his impact. Inter Miami games have broken attendance records since his arrival. Team ticket prices for next season have skyrocketed. Adidas is confident that the production of the next edition of Messi’s shirt – scheduled for February – will be enough to satisfy demand.
For many fans and merchants, it can’t be too soon. The shirt has become so coveted, so rare, that even Beckham himself—one of the most famous footballers of his generation, a global celebrity and, as co-owner of Inter Miami, Messi’s boss—has found it difficult to obtain one. More than once he has wanted to give a pink Messi shirt to a friend or partner, but they have told him that he will have to wait, like everyone else.
Por Kevin Draper y Rory Smith
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