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Prostar
"When I came to the business - and bearing in mind that I hadn't been in amateur football, although I had been involved with my son playing and so forth - I had never heard of PROSTAR. The more I talked to people, the more it became apparent that if you weren't in amateur football, you may never have heard of PROSTAR. If you were in amateur football, then everybody had heard of PROSTAR, everybody played in PROSTAR, but it was one of those hidden, almost niche brands."
The new owners of the company know the brand's strengths though. Doug adds: "One of the things PROSTAR is recognized for is being high quality, with good design, and being technically very good. We design for the purpose of what the garment is all about. Certainly, when we are talking about grassroots football, it's all about having kit that can last for at least two years, that can be washed and worn 40 or 50 times, and still look good every time it comes out of the bag. And yet it gets shoved in a bag, stays in the bag for a week before it gets washed."
Marketing Director Shane adds: "Our key strategy is to develop the business using the strength of the PROSTAR football business and develop the brand into other multisport areas. We have started that program with a new style catalogue which took our leading training garments, tracksuits, raintops, polo shirts, T shirts etc, and repositioned them."
Doug and Shane met up with SGB at Shrewsbury Town's PROSTAR Stadium to explain more about the brand during a recent home game.
SGB: What is the Pro Club program?
Doug Bedford: We have got a three year programme of looking to bring on more professional clubs, which adds value to the brand as we go forward. We are the largest grassroots brand in the UK; we estimate we clothe between 40,000 and 50,000 teams in the UK.
The Pro Club programme we have, currently sponsors four clubs - Shrewsbury, Chester City, Accrington Stanley and Wycombe Wanderers with whom we have just signed our third, four-year deal. It improves and increases our profile. Next year, we are looking to continue that success and progress: We believe our club mix should be between ten and 12, from the Championship down.
You'll also see us doing more in the Rugby League arena. We did Featherstone Rovers Rugby League last year, and we have got them again this coming season. They have been an important ‘add' to our Pro Club structure. We also want to get into the Rugby Union and Cricket arena.
SGB: Tell us a little more about your sponsorship of Shrewsbury Town...
Doug Bedford: It started when we tried to do a kit deal with Shrewsbury, but they had moved into the new stadium eight months before, and the stadium was un-named; that gave us the opportunity to do stadium sponsorship as well. Shrewsbury were looking for a joint deal, and it worked out perfectly for us. It is a great place, it's a well-run club, it's a club that we would like to be associated with. Hopefully, we can go a long way with Shrewsbury. They have huge aspirations of where they want to be. They are a potential Championship club over the next few years, and as they develop I am sure they will be in a position to attract those better players, which will be good for both of us.
SGB: What can PROSTAR offer a club in a sponsorship terms?
Doug Bedford: Because we have such an extensive range we can offer clubs a much wider range of merchandise than they would probably be offered by another brand. Their replica sales and other merchandise sales such as polos, Ts, sweats, raintops, tracksuits, all increase.
We're talking about thousands of jerseys. Anybody that is in it for the replica sales generally tries to make profit on the deal overall, and the replica sales, and that's good for their business. We are happy to look at a balance where the investment we put into the club, the price that we charge for the replica to the club balances out, so that we don't lose out, the club owner wins, but we get our profile. We do a lot of work with Shrewsbury and Wycombe, for instance, where we supply jerseys for local schools - the club goes out and basically gives away kit. There is no money made, but it is a good thing for the club, which is encouraging kids to play sport and be active, to become a member of the club so their membership increases, and from our point of view we get lots of kids playing in PROSTAR.
SGB: What are the key strengths of the company?
Doug Bedford: The business was started in 1899 and it has basically been in the same place until May last year, when we moved it, but most importantly, we kept it within Wakefield. We retained all our staff, but moved to a modern distribution, sales and marketing facility as one of the things we recognized as a key strength of the business is distribution.
We are an ex-stock business, so we carry huge amounts of stock at the right points in time, and we expect to be able to supply, in general, within 48 hours. Of course, that is difficult - we're not saying we're perfect. When you consider we are talking around 5,000 SKUs, and that the majority of our customers don't buy the stock until they require it, we have the odd hiccup but the majority of our orders go out within 48 hours. There's a financial commitment there, but fundamentally, that's what we have been good at for many, many years.
Doug Bedford: In terms of sportswear, we are one of the few brands of our size that are actually warehousing in the UK. Nike are bringing in from Holland/Belgium, for instance. We expect to increase our labour force going forward in warehousing and distribution - and there are some skilled elements in terms of customization of jerseys, numbers, badges and embroidery. That is one of the things that we have retained, which is slightly different to some of our competitors. We do offer a full customization service - we can do outside embroidery, logos, numbers, and we can even do alterations. A lot of the other brands don't offer that service to their independents, and that's what sets us apart.
SGB: How do you work to support independent retailers?
Shane Bray: Independent retailers are really important to us. We have well over 600 independent, specialist sports retailers. First we do POS - we have branded header cards and we provide them with what is perceived to be the best football catalogue in the country, which is well over 200 pages, which we supply those free of charge. In addition to that we also produced a digital version this year which can be slipped into the post at minimal charge.
For our larger retailers we also have a discount and loyalty scheme. Depending on their previous year's turnover, we offer them a loyalty discount so that they benefit in the following year - it's continuing support, from our point of view.
SGB: What's new for 2009?
Shane Bray: We need to maintain our core business, which is football teamwear as this represents 45 per cent of our turnover. We have developed that side of our business through product introductions, so for instance we have upgraded a number of our football jerseys. And in the football business, we are looking to expand into training accessories - things like boundary poles and hurdles.
The main part of the growth of the group has to be into other sports, with over 55 per cent of our sales coming from training wear - tracksuits, raintops, shorts, bags and so on. Over the next few years we will be targeting the key teams sports producing the playing garments needed for rugby, cricket, hockey and netball. Last year we launched a lady's Synergy Skort, which is a skirt with a short underneath it, a typical hockey, netball garment. We've added a ladies vest top, very much aimed at netball or general gym work. This coming year the garments coming in are geared to athletics and running.
SGB: How are you going to market the company and the new lines?
Shane Bray: Along with the Pro Club program element, we are developing a number of different catalogue executions, maybe more specific to different sports, and then using the media for inserts. So if we were to enter the cricket market, we might use the regular publication Cricket World, and put a catalogue as in insert to the publication to disseminate it directly into the clubs, and supply those clubs through the specialist retailers some of which may or may not be our existing customers.
Obviously, we will enhance our website so that those key sports will have their own microsites, where people can see the garments
