Students of La Plata will launch their own sports clothing brand

The Estudiantes de La Plata Club (EDLP) announced this Friday that it will launch its own line of sports clothing in January 2022. Martín Carbonari, the manager in charge of the project, assured that investing in this area can be “ great business” for the clubs.

Given the recent termination of the contract with Under Armour, the team that won four Copa Libertadores, which over the years wore Adidas, Topper or Umbro jerseys, decided to reject the proposals of the big traditional brands and launch their own .

In this regard, Carbonari expressed “Really no offer convinced us. Mateu Sports, which is a chain of sports venues in the city of La Plata, approached us with the offer to face the development of its own brand and we found the proposal very convincing due to the state of the market”. El Pincha will launch its sportswear line under the name “Ruge” in conjunction with Mateu Sports, after analyzing more than 5 proposals from traditional brands according to Club authorities.

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In turn, the manager emphasized “With this type of decision, the clubs gain brand image positioning. Having your own brand not only allows you to work on football but also on all disciplines of the institution. And then, the sportswear business is big business. Getting a strategic partner, like we have, to accompany you, especially with the investment stage and production monitoring, you can really obtain very good economic results”.

“Today, brands in the market practically do not offer sales royalties. What they offer you is simply a certain number of items and that's as far as the agreement ends, after the sale goes well or badly the club receives absolutely nothing. You have to change that logic a bit. Perhaps it does not happen with Boca or with River, but to the rest of the clubs generally the offer is only for a certain amount of garments, ”said Carbonari.

Estudiantesde La Plata will not only launch Ruge to dress its players, but also intends to enter the sportswear market. In this sense, Carbonari concluded “It is important to note that Ruge is a sports brand. Many times in these types of projects they talk about the club's own brand and then it is understood that it will simply be making the institutional clothing, and here we go further. We go beyond that, it is the creation of a sports brand, it has to be very clear. And there is also the possibility of dressing other institutions, they can be football or not ”.