Official FIFA everything

It is very interesting to see that in stadiums, fan parks, and any associated FIFA venues, viewing areas and the like, there are only a handful of products available for sale. These are the official licensed FIFA products. From the point of view of the spectator, it is boring - you can buy Coke, Sprite and Powerade; Budweiser; Cadbury chocolate; and hot dogs, boerworst rolls (not sure if they are branded...) and biltong (jerky). As for merchandise, there are official jerseys and other paraphernalia available at the stadiums, but there are also a host of other official licensed products which are not available. These products, for which the companies have paid large licensing fees to FIFA, include the products of Soylights, the company of my hostess here in Joburg.
As a new company, they thought that getting these wonderful products into the market for tourists would be a solid business opportunity. All has not worked out as planned, however, because all of the markets into which they were promised entry before signing the contract and paying the high licensing fee were subsequently denied to them. This included sales in the official fan shops at the stadiums, because they candles were deemed "missiles", and therefore dangerous. It also included 3 national retailers with whom they could not enter into exploratory negotiations until after they signed the contract with FIFA. And as a final blow, they were denied entry into the official web platform, because the products displayed on the web platform had to be created, approved and ready for sale by January 2010, when they only signed the contract the prior month. Each and every product had to be approved, with samples sent to Singapore, and only a finite number of images previously approved by FIFA could be used. Their own brand name is not allowed to grace the packaging, and all profits after the license costs are covered belong to FIFA. For a small company, these restrictions are very constraining. Sadly, she told me that of the 30 some odd official license holders in South Africa, only 4 make products locally, using local labor and materials. The rest, as I alluded to before, come from China. The candles are great small gifts, and should have been picked up by the hospitality and corporate gifting industries, but it turns out that some enterprising individual has the license to deal with all corporate gifts. As gatekeeper, he collects 15% sales commission, without having to engage in much legwork - that is the realm of the product manufacturer. To my delight and admiration, the company's owners have taken a very positive view of the learning opportunity presented to them. I am nonetheless wracking my brain for ways for them to increase sales before the end of the event. The online sales limitation is really a killer.

This is a resilient country and people - on a number of levels. One example has been from my friend Ant, who put together a labor of love in light of the loss and elimination of the home squad from the tournament. He was worried that local support would wane since Bafana Bafana is no longer playing. So, he created an inspirational presentation to share with his friends. I share it below - it had music, which does not come through in the google docs embeded format.




Ke Nako = It is time.

Other local catch phrases for the games:
Ayoba = "It's all good"
Laduma = Goal
Makarapa=the safety helmet which has been cut up and painted