Castore co-founder Tom Beahon has admitted that the Liverpool-based sportswear brand were “overawed” by the uptake in kits as he praised the “phenomenal” Rangers support.
Beahon was speaking on BBC Radio 4 show You and Yours about the Castore kit launch, the uptake by Rangers fans and the brand’s ambition for the future.
Whilst the brand’s co-founder praised the uptake by the Rangers support, Beahon acknowledged that Castore have been impacted by the unprecedented demand.
“50,000 in the first 36 hours just on the home shirt was quite frankly a phenomenal response,” said Beahon [You and Yours originally broadcast 14/08/20].
“But then on top of that we launched the away jersey which historically would only sell a fraction of the home jersey and we shifted almost 35,000 units of the away jersey within the first 48 hours.
“So the demand has been absolutely phenomenal.
“As a business, we were very well prepared to see that level of demand but there’s a number of factors that have maybe let to some latent demand being built up.
“I have to say we were slightly overawed, but it really shows just how global and passionate the fanbase of Rangers is.”
Rangers signed a long-term deal with Castore in the summer said to be worth £25m after all-existing retail contracts came to an end at Ibrox.
This has seen the premium sportswear brand move into football for the first time and their experience with Rangers so far has not been without teething problems.
There have been complaints of order mix-ups and delays and issues with customer service but when you combine a brand fresh to the marketplace with a thirsty Gers support starved of a proper retail deal for close to a decade, there was always going to be difficulties.
That doesn’t make it right but given the tumultuous retail landscape of the last few years these are considerably better problems to have.
Castore must learn from everything that’s happened so far and adopt this into their partnership with Rangers going forward to ensure the fans aren’t left behind in the kit deal.
The likes of Tom Beahon have been very forward and honest with the situation and deserve credit for this but going forward the Ibrox support want to see a more seamless delivery process.
Castore also financed a £250k refit of the Rangers Store at Ibrox which has seen an incredible response from the Gers faithful who have queued around the block to enter the retail unit.
There’s a reason why the fans are so eager to get their hands on the new kit – and grievances aside – Beahon believes this comes down to the quality of the kits.
“Whenever there’s a new brand becomes involved in a football club you would naturally expect there to be a spike,” said Beahon.
“But probably the biggest driver that we’ve seen is the quality of the kit, really progressive, modern, exciting design, a premium quality of fabric, and that for us has been the big one really.”
