Rangers’ retail partners Castore have opened up on their revolutionary new retail deal with the Ibrox club and claim they have two new Premier League partnerships in the pipeline.
The Liverpool-based premium sportswear brand signed a long-term deal with Rangers heading into this season believed to be worth £25m which has seen them pump fresh blood into the club’s stagnant retail department.
Speaking to business magazine Forbes, co-founder Tom Beahon has opened up about the unique nature of their retail deal with Rangers and how they hope to permeate the football market.
The Castore chief discusses short time-frames, Castore’s different business model and what this means for Rangers.
“Rangers over the last 15 or 20 years have been with all of the major brands,” said Beahon.
“I can’t speak for them, but I suspect that they’ve received very similar service product offering from those guys.
“The opportunity to try something different, I think, really appealed to them.
“We developed and delivered [the] product in less than six months.
“Starting with the supply chain, the big brands tend to work on 18 months lead times on partnerships of the size and scale of Rangers, because they’re huge oil tankers.
“We’ve got a different mindset, we’ve got a different supply chain, which is European-centric rather than Far East-centric.
“[So] we could do something in a far more agile and responsive way than the big brands aren’t capable of.
“We simply don’t have to take the same risk that the big guys have and we can be far more responsive. It’s fundamentally a different model.”
Beahon also discussed the bespoke design of the Castore shirts which – amid complaints about customer service, product quality and delivery – have been the highlight of the deal so far.
Rangers fans bought new shirts by the barrel-load on a new online shop – the club sold 100k shirts by the start of August – and Beahon believes this is another part of the reason why they can shake up a stagnant football market.
“It all goes in it goes into the big sausage machine, that’s how the sector has always worked,” said Beahon.
“They’re very standardized in how they do things. So unless it’s Real Madrid, Barcelona [or] Liverpool, they don’t really like having to do individual designs for different clubs.
“We thought there’s a real a really interesting opportunity for a challenger brand like Castore to come in and do things differently.”
Beahon also discussed what he believes to be a completely unique structured kit deal wherein both sides will benefit directly based on kit sales.
This new style of deal doesn’t involve upfront fees or flat rates but rather shares the success through royalty percentages which increase when pre-agreed revenue targets are hit.
“In a traditional [soccer] partnership deal there’s an upfront fee the brand pays the club. Then the sponsor sells the product and maybe pays a flat royalty on [it],” said Beahon.
“Where we[’ve] looked to do things differently is by essentially sharing the benefits of the growth that we both believe is achievable through an ascending royalty rate. So as agreed revenue targets are hit the club receives a higher royalty percentage.
“That’s something that, as far as I’m aware, has never been done previously.”
After the early success of Rangers’ new kit deal with Castore, the retailer is now also setting its sights on adding five new teams across England, Italy, France and Spain over the “next 18 months”.
Beahon also told Forbes that two partnerships are planned with Premier League sides for next season as Castore look to expand their portfolio.
Could that include Newcastle United? A report claimed recently that the St. James’ Park club had signed a “long-term” deal with the emerging retailer [SportCal].