Putting GAA stars on tee-shirts

Bluetonic · 31-07-2006 10:01am #1

Putting GAA stars on tee-shirts

30 July 2006 By Emmet Ryan
Off The Ball started out as a college project in 2004 and has grown into a business aiming to exploit a gap in the GAA merchandising market.

Off The Ball started out as a college project in 2004 and has grown into a business aiming to exploit a gap in the GAA merchandising market. ‘‘The market is underdeveloped.

“What is available is generally of a low quality, such as headbands and caps,” said Cian O Conghaile, the company’s cofounder.

Off the Ball makes t-shirts featuring pictures of famous players from past and present.

‘‘The official jerseys change every two years and we wanted to offer an alternative,” said O Conghaile. ‘‘We wanted to go with a legends theme, focusing on cult heroes.”

O Conghaile developed the idea with his business partner Padraig O Conchuir as a final year project for the Fiontar course in Dublin City University.

‘‘We graduated in 2004 and spent that summer working on getting business up and running,” said O Conghaile.

‘‘We set up a survey to ask GAA fans what they wanted.”

The company targeted GAA chat forums on the internet to get fan feedback. ‘‘We got a huge response and it gave us a good idea of people’s favourite players,” he said.

O Conghaile has focused on the designs while O Conchuir has worked on marketing strategy.

The pair received permission from the players involved and began their first run of tee-shirts.

Three designs were used initially. Eoin ‘Bomber’ Liston from Kerry and Dublin’s Jimmy Keaveney and Vinnie Murphy were chosen due to the interest from fans online.

‘‘There is a big user base of Dublin and Kerry fans on Internet forums and they seemed particularly keen,” O Conghaile said.

The t-shirts are sold online (www.offtheball.ie) and outside major GAA venues. With no marketing budget available the company relied on word of mouth advertising on the Internet and one celebrity consumer.

‘‘Niall Quinn bought one and I think a lot of people saw him wearing it,” said O Conghaile.

The success of the initial batch led to further research and new designs.

The next designs produced featured Cork’s Jimmy Barry Murphy and Martin Storey of Wexford. The Storey t-shirt along with one featuring Kilkenny’s John Power have proved slower to sell.

‘‘We were surprised by that.

“Hurling fans are not as active on the internet and the lack of interest might be because it’s less competitive with fewer counties ever challenging for honours,’’ said O Conghaile.

There are now 12 designs being sold under the Off the Ball brand. Given the seasonal nature of Gaelic games the company is looking at expanding and attracting rugby and soccer fans. These will include designs featuring Diego Maradona and current Irish manager Steve Staunton.

‘‘It’s all about timing,” said O Conghaile. ‘‘We want to catch the wave of interest at the right time.”

http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=People%20In%20Business-qqqm=nav-qqqid=15988-qqqx=1.asp

Mossy Monk · 31-07-2006 12:03pm

they dont look too good tbh

WhatsGoingOn · 31-07-2006 12:16pm

Mossy Monk wrote:

they dont look too good tbh

And you can't buy them online. You have to email them first to cheque if they have the tshirt available in your size, then you have to post a cheque or postal order. All sounds like a lot of hassle. It is very simple to set up a site to accept paypal payments, can't see why they can't do that.

kerry2004 · 02-08-2006 8:52am

Shouldn't think it should be that hard to set up online ordering system a cople of grnad should do it and they would have a fully secure ecommerce site.

FatherTed · 02-08-2006 3:27pm

I wonder if there any copy right/licensing issues with the GAA/The players featured???

stepbar · 02-08-2006 9:07pm

Not a great business idea tbh and certainly not one I would consider to be worthy of the SBP. Me thinks they must have been friendly with one of the reporters....