GoWyo held the grand opening for its new official online store last week. The new store features “Wyoming apparel for fans and alumni in the most popular brands of sports attire,” according to its website.
“We hope that in doing this we are providing opportunities for athletic programs to have access to merchandise, such as shirts, jackets, keychains, etc.,” Bill Sparks, senior associate of business operations, said. “We wanted to provide as much opportunity as we could.”
Sparks said UW has partnered with the Brown and Gold Outlet for many years, and they did have an online store for the past three years. When the contract came up for review this year, Sparks said a new bidding process was used and the contract was split into three parts. The Brown and Gold Outlet was awarded the onsite merchandising rights, while the online merchandising rights were given to Fanatics, an online retailer of licensed sports apparel and merchandise.
“Fanatics does the online sales for all the major universities in the country,” Sparks said. “We hope that by partnering with them that we can offer greater choices for our fans to have access to, as well as things like e-mail and text promotions and also Facebook promotions.”
The third part of the contract is for the promotional merchandise distributed at games, such as T-shirts that are thrown to the audience, which was given to Rocky Mountain Shirtworks.
Sparks said dividing the contract was aimed at dealing with the companies’ specialties.
“Brown and Gold has been a longtime partner, and they are good at onsite retail, it is their specialty. Fanatics has their specialization in online merchandising and Rocky Mountain [Shirtworks] is good at producing shirts,” Sparks said.
Sparks also said dividing up the contract will increase revenues. The contract with Rocky Mountain Shirtworks, for example, has a set dollar amount for diverse shirt designs.
“This will help control expenses and increase revenue,” Sparks said.
David Primus, assistant athletics director of marketing and branding, said it is anticipated there will be an increase in revenue from the online store simply based on a larger amount of items available for sale.
“The primary improvement in the new store is the increased product selection and offering over our old store,” Primus said in an email. “Our provider for the online store has partnerships with many Division 1 universities and can quickly adapt to new fashion trends and product lines as they develop.”
Primus said a portion of the sales do go to support athletics, but did not mention a percentage.
Cameron Allen, a senior at UW, said he is interested in the new online store.
“It will be pretty cool for my extended family,” Allen said. “I have a lot of family on the East Coast, and before I would have to buy them UW Cowboy gear and ship it to them.”
Allen said he is excited to have a wider range of options when it comes to UW apparel.
“I’m kind of a big guy, and it will be great to have a wider range of choices in larger sizes,” he said.
Allen said newer ideas and styles would be a welcome change, saying the UW Bookstore has the same merchandise every year.
“It will be cool to see a different outlook,” Allen said. “For football games, I go crazy. I wear different stuff all the time.”
