NECBlitz Cannot Solve The T-Shirt Problem

Believe me, I’ve tried.

Like many fans of FCS ball, I’ve watched Homefield Apparel pick up partnerships one by one with large schools, slowly making their way down into the G5 ranks and releasing vintage apparel in “drops.” I don’t mean to criticize Homefield- this is not their fault. I’ve worked with them personally before and have only good things to say about them.

But for schools in the NEC, Division II, and Division III… well, Homefield ain’t walking through that door to give you the kind of cool vintage apparel we’re after.

I call this the “T-Shirt Problem.” Homefield frequently sells tees to people who aren’t really even fans of the team. The designs are so cool that anyone might be interested in a Hawaii Rainbow Warriors tee, regardles of affiliation. It’s a boon for Hawaii and the teams get more visibility. They might even pick up a few new fans because of it.

But these effects are not felt by schools that do not get approached by Homefield.

I put a lot on myself in this website, but I decided that rather than waiting for someone to design cool retro shirts, it was time to do it myself. And in doing so, I knew I needed to obtain licenses.

There are multiple college football licensing companies, but the biggest is CLC and they were the first I approached. I made mock ups and a prototype of a very cool New Haven Chargers 1997 Lambert Cup tee, submitted it, and paid the $250 fee just to submit a request.

In the grand scheme of things, when we’re talking about money and large companies with designers and accountants, well, $250 is not a lot. The problem only comes into play when you remember who is submitting it and what the intentions are.

NECBlitz is not a large organization. In fact, it is one person. Regarding intentions, well… I saw a gap not in the market but in school perception and wanted to address it as, well, I have for a lot of our projects. There’s no NEC Football Preview Magazine- address. There’s no NEC Football based website- address. There’s no volleyball media day- address. In this case, there aren’t retro shirts that can give fans something cool to wear. I worked to address it. You don’t expect to make a lot of money on these things. In my case, I can pull back the curtain enough to tell you that, well, I don’t.

(You can click the “Buy Me A Coffee” icon in the bottom right hand corner! Sorry.)

So you’re already behind the 8-ball a lttle bit here. You now need to make $250 worth of sales to break even, and breaking even is everything when it comes to being able to continue this work. That means making sure the price of the product is healthy, because you also have to pay generally a 12% royalty. If you’re going after a passion project to serve a need for an entire fanbase, you’re trying to keep prices as low as possible because, you know, ethics. But what can you do?

So you move forward and submit the applications. The designs were great, and so they were approved. It is here you face the insurmountable hurdle.

At this point, I was given the notice that I would need to produce the insurance, a manufacturing form (I think; I ended up working with two different licensing firms, and this may have been the other one), and a requirement to order and apply holographic stickers.

This would not be such a problem if our model wasn’t designed specifically to work within the limitations of what NECBlitz is- a one man organization that already represents 60-80 working hours a week during the season, and another 60-80 during the closing days of the magazine.

Our model was to use a print on demand service to manufacture, sell, and ship the tees. I guess I could have bought blank tees and iron on logos, taken each order individually from maybe Gumshoe, and then shipped them myself. To be honest, though, I don’t have the bandwidth to do that and I’ve already contributed $250 dollars of risk. A company can take on more, but NECBlitz just can’t.

First and foremost, this is a one person operation that happens to do the work of entire departments in writing articles, producing radio, interviewing coaches, writing a magazine, managing a 90 year old trophy, designing apparel… you name it. But taking on an insurance policy is, well, pretty much something you would do as an apparel company.

Even if this hurdle were able to be crossed, taking on even more financial risk, I would then have to somehow get the holographic stickers on a product that our model specifically requires that I am never around. This is no longer a financial problem but a physical impossibility. So, at least with the CLC, the process has no choice but to end right there.

What I’ve learned from this is that for at least this particular licensing company, the deck isn’t stacked against outfits like NECBlitz- it’s specifically designed to keep them out of the space. I don’t know if it was designed by larger firms or designed for larger firms, but the ultimate cost here is that through no fault of their own, I’m unable to produce apparel for New Haven, because the system in place is made in such a way that it is impossible for me to do so. It seems intentional, but that’s a feeling, not a fact.

Did I mention that licensing even one school costs anywhere from $150-$250 depending on the licensing company, and therefore licensing for 9 schools… well, unless something changes dramatically, you can forget about it.

There are other licensing companies and some even are in charge of licensing out NEC schools. I do think that in the next calendar year we’ll have some apparel out and we’ll be able to give some schools the love they deserve. How many depends on magazine sales and donations- a strange case where you’re selling products to fund products, but there you go.

It’s a tough defeat for me when NECBlitz consistently and habitually punches way above its weight class, but as it turns out, there is something that NECBlitz can absolutely not pull off- giving fans what bigger outfits will not, when the system looks designed to keep them out.