HART/TURNER: PLEASE FIX OUR LISCENSING ISSUES

[Big Hoss]

Look, we don't have as much of our stuff in stores as TCU because the demand is not there. I live in Fort Worth and I run into people wearing TCU gear literally everywhere. And I bet that a good majority of those people didn't go there, and don't go to the games either.

This isn't rocket science folks, it's economics. When there is demand, supply will naturally follow. Demand will improve when we put a consistent product on the field. As of now, I have more hope that our basketball team will increase the demand faster than our football team.

Seriously, it's like we are ostriches with our collective heads in the sand.

[feelthehorsepower]

Look, we don't have as much of our stuff in stores as TCU because the demand is not there. I live in Fort Worth and I run into people wearing TCU gear literally everywhere. And I bet that a good majority of those people didn't go there, and don't go to the games either.

This isn't rocket science folks, it's economics. When there is demand, supply will naturally follow. Demand will improve when we put a consistent product on the field. As of now, I have more hope that our basketball team will increase the demand faster than our football team.

Seriously, it's like we are ostriches with our collective heads in the sand.

Basketball is already kicking [deleted] and taking names...

[alyssa]

I've had merchandise trouble through the years too. I rarely shop for anything anymore.
What I've really wanted is a full selection of track, cross country and road running uniforms to wear sometimes in running competitions.

[SMU_Alumni11]

I'm sorry its crazy to me to see UTSA, Texas state and NTCC in store but not us. Based on observation, its really hard to believe that licensing isn't an issue. Also didn't see my question about the NCAA video game answered. Why would our mascot be excluded from the game? Its kind of a pointless question now given the lawsuit surrounding the game but nevertheless it begs the question why weren't we included if every other school I've seem has a mascot in the game.

Also from a business aspect why not charge less on our royalties to increase possible demand and hopefully keep other small time schools from getting shelf space. Its frustrating when really the old solid products we can get is at the bookstore.

[blackoutpony]

I

Also from a business aspect why not charge less on our royalties to increase possible demand and hopefully keep other small time schools from getting shelf space. Its frustrating when really the old solid products we can get is at the bookstore.

Because we're so poor that we can't afford alternate helmets or stripes on pants. We need every penny we can get.

[BIGHORSE]

I would love to have Mustang stuff in more stores, but when your at the next

game look around and see how many people you know are Mustangs, but

they don't wear any S.M.U. shirts, or even colors for that matter.

[Dukie]

Duke, I don't believe fills their football stadiums either, and yet they have no problem with their merchandising, so it's not just about overall demand volume, or what I see on football stadiums, though there are obvious indicators.

You can't separate Duke football gear from Duke basketball gear, and so it's not a fair comparison. That does, however, point out how great it will be for SMU basketball to succeed and end up lifting ALL SMU gear availability.

And it doesn't happen every game but picture #6 in the link below is a panorama shot of Duke's football stadium on Saturday, full and 80% blue (versus NC State red):

http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/11/10/3357135/duke-38-nc-state-20-110913.html

[GiddyUp]

This ->

You're being fed an excuse by the mgr.

There are no hurdles here. We have set records for seven straight years in royaties. We approve 99.9% of license requests and 99.9% of all submitted items. Anything you hear otherwise is simply not true. That said, we have previously asked the Licensing Resource Group (LRG) to reach out to Rally House specifically to address their lack of SMU stock.

With LRG, SMU makes our licensing process obtainable and user-friendly, while maintaining the highest brand standards possible. Our goal is to increase the availability of SMU-branded merchandise in the DFW marketplace and the region.

Quick Facts
1) SMU’s royalty rate is 10% and is on par with every other FBS schools in the state of Texas except the University of Texas, whose royalty rate is 12%.
2) Every school in the American Athletic Conference also has a royalty rate of 10%.
3) SMU requires licensees pay advanced royalties of $250 for apparel and $100 for non-apparel at the beginning of each year. This is on par or less than other FBS institutions.
4) SMU offers a license type specifically designed for local businesses to produce SMU licensed products for reduced start up fees.
5) Last year SMU’s royalty generation was the highest in school history and the program is continuing to grow.

The success of SMU’s licensing program depends on the thousands of Mustang fans that buy SMU branded merchandise daily. The demand SMU fans generate with retailers is what allows our licensing program to grow. We would encourage SMU fans to ask store management for SMU product while they are in the marketplace to continue to build demand.

As posted previously, you can report and stores that give you this "we can't get an SMU license" nonsense here - http://www.smumustangs.com/ot/smu-licensing.html - and we will follow up with them.

. Can we sticky this?

[blackoutpony]

This ->

You're being fed an excuse by the mgr.

There are no hurdles here. We have set records for seven straight years in royaties. We approve 99.9% of license requests and 99.9% of all submitted items. Anything you hear otherwise is simply not true. That said, we have previously asked the Licensing Resource Group (LRG) to reach out to Rally House specifically to address their lack of SMU stock.

With LRG, SMU makes our licensing process obtainable and user-friendly, while maintaining the highest brand standards possible. Our goal is to increase the availability of SMU-branded merchandise in the DFW marketplace and the region.

Quick Facts
1) SMU’s royalty rate is 10% and is on par with every other FBS schools in the state of Texas except the University of Texas, whose royalty rate is 12%.
2) Every school in the American Athletic Conference also has a royalty rate of 10%.
3) SMU requires licensees pay advanced royalties of $250 for apparel and $100 for non-apparel at the beginning of each year. This is on par or less than other FBS institutions.
4) SMU offers a license type specifically designed for local businesses to produce SMU licensed products for reduced start up fees.
5) Last year SMU’s royalty generation was the highest in school history and the program is continuing to grow.

The success of SMU’s licensing program depends on the thousands of Mustang fans that buy SMU branded merchandise daily. The demand SMU fans generate with retailers is what allows our licensing program to grow. We would encourage SMU fans to ask store management for SMU product while they are in the marketplace to continue to build demand.

As posted previously, you can report and stores that give you this "we can't get an SMU license" nonsense here - http://www.smumustangs.com/ot/smu-licensing.html - and we will follow up with them.

.

Can we sticky this?

No Kidding

[Longtime]

Screw the brick-and-mortar stores if they don't want to carry SMU merchandise. There's plenty of items for sale on fanatics.com, amazon, e-bay or other online retailers who carry plenty of SMU stuff. Give THEM your money.

It's simply a matter of retailers not sensing a demand for SMU items. We're a small school that hasn't won big and is not in a big conference. If we were in the Big 12 you'd see a lot more SMU merchandise simply from being associated with the big schools in the state (other than A&M). I've seen an uptick in SMU's status with some online retailers simply for being a member of "The Big East."

If you look at the hundreds of SMU items on fanatics.com, you can't tell me there's a licensing issue with SMU. There's plenty of SMU branded product available. The retailers just don't want to stock it.

And it's not enough to simply ask retailers to sell more SMU stuff. You have to wear the SMU gear you already have. The best advertising for any school is its own fans. The people who decide what to stock on the shelves don't live in bunkers, they're out there walking around. If they see more people wearing SMU stuff at Cowboys, Mavs and Rangers games, malls and amusement parks, they will be less inclined to dismiss the requests to stock more SMU stuff.

[Stallion]

Is licensed merchandise ever packaged through the various conferences eg Big 12 because wherever you see Big 12 merchandise these days you now see a lot more TCU stuff. Some times I see them marketed together as well

[East Coast Mustang]

I'm sorry its crazy to me to see UTSA, Texas state and NTCC in store but not us.

UTSA has 25K undergrads.
UNT has 28K undergrads.
TSU has 29K undergrads.

We have 7K undergrads, and probably about 100 "sidewalk" fans who would wear our merchandise without ever attending SMU. By comparison, a private school of similar size, Duke, has thousands of "sidewalk" fans with no affiliation to the school wearing their gear.

I realize that critical thinking is not your strong suit, but this shouldn't be difficult to comprehend. If demand increases, so will the supply. Our bball team hasn't made the tournament in 20 years, and our football team only got marginally relevant five years ago after 25 years wandering in the desert.

If we make the NCAA tourney this year, you'll see some more SMU merchandise in stores. If we make a Final Four with Mudiay & Company in 2015, you'll see SMU stuff all over the place. People want to support a winner, plain and simple.

[SMU_Alumni11]

I'm sorry its crazy to me to see UTSA, Texas state and NTCC in store but not us.

UTSA has 25K undergrads.
UNT has 28K undergrads.
TSU has 29K undergrads.

We have 7K undergrads, and probably about 100 "sidewalk" fans who would wear our merchandise without ever attending SMU. By comparison, a private school of similar size, Duke, has thousands of "sidewalk" fans with no affiliation to the school wearing their gear.

I realize that critical thinking is not your strong suit, but this shouldn't be difficult to comprehend. If demand increases, so will the supply. Our bball team hasn't made the tournament in 20 years, and our football team only got marginally relevant five years ago after 25 years wandering in the desert.

If we make the NCAA tourney this year, you'll see some more SMU merchandise in stores. If we make a Final Four with Mudiay & Company in 2015, you'll see SMU stuff all over the place. People want to support a winner, plain and simple.

Wow and common sense continues to elude you on a daily basis. Sure the schools have numbers but how many actually care about representing those schools. No seriously ask yourself, "gee when was the last time I saw any of those school's stickers on the back of someone's car?" How about: "when was the last time I have seen a random person wearing a t-shirt with either of those schools names on it?" See a person who actually has a brain would think outside the numbers. So yes you may have pointed out the lack of demand for SMU but you sure did not come up with a compelling argument on why the aforementioned schools are on the shelf versus us. Now its possible that purchasing agents for those companies are that simple minded and just look at school enrollment and think yeah each student that goes there will want that schools t-shirt. If that store is that simple minded then they are probably not top focused on college sports good and are in a business of something else or they are probably not going to be in business much longer. A smart business person will buy product lots of products for the big time schools but keep a small but diverse stock of the local and well respected school like SMU rather wasting capital on schools nobody cares about regardless of their enrollment.

If SMU made the tourney and can generate excitement around the football team such as actually playing 4 quarters of exciting football then our popularity I think will grow exponentially. We have potential and based on the responses I get from people I've met around this city. I think they want to care and would like to get behind the team but they have to believe we are actually wanting to move to the big times. I think our program was getting activity after our first bowl game but when people saw we were getting pummeled by local big time teams, it was too much for them to bear.

[East Coast Mustang]

To answer your question, I see UNT and Texas State stickers pretty frequently...definitely more than SMU once you get out of the Park Cities/Preston Hollow/Uptown bubble. Not as much UTSA but I bet if I drove down to San Antonio that would change. Each of those schools is pumping out about 4x as many graduates as we do each year. You bring up the point that many of their alumni may not care about representing their school...but guess what, we have the same problem. A good deal of our alumni move elsewhere (NYC, DC, West Coast, wherever) after college and many who do stick around DFW aren't that engaged with SMU athletics. If you don't believe me, watch how many young alumni head elsewhere once the Boulevard concludes on Saturday.

[Longtime]

There is no good explanation for why you may see groupings of college merchandise that include UNT, Texas State or even UTSA alongside the typical Aggie and Longhorn gear in Dallas. Heck, I've seen Univ. of Houston stuff for sale in Dallas with no counterpart SMU stuff alongside it.

But I also see random inclusions of SMU merchandise amongst the big state schools' stuff in places you wouldn't think would cater to the SMU crowd. It works both ways.

My suspicion is that distributors offer merchandise in package deals. The retailers don't individually pick out 20 UT shirts, 20 A&M shirts, and so on. They purchase "college shirt assortment" and the wholesaler/distributor throws in random schools that they think might sell. We haven't given them enough reason to think of SMU when they put together merchandise.

Only two things can change this: 1. Winning big and SMU becoming a "hot" school again among the bandwagon crowd. 2. SMU alums showing SEC-style support for their school. SMU is a small school, but there are many more "closet" alums who don't even own an SMU T-shirt. David Blewett, who wrote The Pony Trap, even admitted he didn't own any SMU gear until he tried to revive his playing career (good read, by the way, if you're an SMU fanatic).

From what I can gather, every Texas Tech alum in Dallas has a Red Raider sticker or license plate frame on their car. That wasn't always the case, but Tech fans as a group have realized that if they ever want to be considered a peer to A&M and Texas in terms of relevance, they have to act like it.

Sure, it would be great if every retailer acknowledged SMU. But if you want SMU gear, you know where to find it. Go to the bookstore or order it online. If you see someone selling SMU stuff, buy something and tell them you appreciate it. Display an SMU sticker or license frame on every vehicle you own (I do) and wear SMU gear when you're out in public. Make all your SMU friends do the same. Stop insisting on being catered to and be proactive.