Football Shirts in Supermarkets?

The BBC has been reporting how supermarkets try and stock football shirts, but the manufacturers are not so keen on letting them. This article details how Nike uses a 12-point list of criteria that prospective retailers must comply with to sell their products, something that supermarkets struggle to do.

Talking about the restrictive terms, Asda said that other major football kit suppliers have also used similar criteria. Defending their policy, Nike said it was designed to ensure the correct retail environment for its products.

This only really seems to be a big deal and brought to the fore when we get close to a major championship and the supermarkets can see some money to be made and more importantly press to be got on the issue of selling football shirts.

Asda to sell Scotland shirts

Asda are due to announce a deal with Diadora where the Scottish team’s shirts will be sold in the company’s Scottish stores, a coincidence that Scotland are nearly at Euro 2008, I think not.

Asda have said they were also going to approach Nike, Adidas and Umbro and ask them if they would be prepared to supply the supermarket chain in the future. But doing a deal with Diadora over the Scottish kit isn’t quite the same as getting the England kit from Umbro or the Manchester United shirt from Nike.

Asda have tried to stock England shirts before, but had to resort to getting them from the so called grey market as Umbro refused to supply them that was prior to the 2006 World Cup. Now with the 2008 European Championships just around the corner, we are seeing the same stand off develop between shirt suppliers and supermarkets.