If all the kid gets is a T-shirt, his parents weren’t paying attention.
Coming soon to a store near you: a huge and varied line of licensed shirts, jackets, hats, bags and collectibles commemorating Denver’s hosting of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, brought to you by a division of the hometown team of Kroenke Sports Enterprises.
It won’t end there. Denver will be awash in convention merchandise, as the marketing of official logos surrounding the convention is a significant piece of the spectacle, with direct bottom-line impact and longer-term promotion of the city, the party and the presidential nominee.
“The challenge is you’ve got the host committee logo, and then a separate (Democratic National Convention Committee) logo, and then the candidate’s logo,” said Julie Burns, who served the Boston host committee as executive director when the Democrats came to town in 2004. “So there is a lot of competition between the groups.”
The Denver committee responsible for hosting the convention has contracted Altitude Profit Consulting, the company that designs and sells the jerseys and sportswear promoting the Nuggets, the Avalanche, the Crush, the Mammoth, the Rapids and other teams to make its gear.
The goal of the venture is to use the convention as a way to promote Denver on the kind of level in which a sports fan identifies with his favorite team, APC officials say. The DNCC has contracted with its longtime merchandiser, Financial Innovations, of Rhode Island.
The competition also is likely to feature several independent marketers of unofficial gear.
The Denver contract expands the potential profit for Kroenke Sports, which already is getting $6.5 million for renting the Pepsi Center to the Democrats as the site of the convention hall. But it’s difficult to say how much more Kroenke can make, because the company plans to greatly expand the business model beyond what has been done by past cities.
In Boston, the host committee’s logo marketer kept to a small line of offerings, such as T-shirts, umbrellas, baseballs, a stuffed lobster and a stuffed donkey.
Denver’s marketers are setting their sights much higher, banking on what they call the allure of Colorado as a destination, and the historic nature of the convention, to sell more offerings.
“We want to make the kind of apparel you can wear to Aspen on the weekend or to your child’s soccer game on Saturday,” said Chris Christmas, chief executive of the Denver-based branding firm Brandhouse07, who is designing a line of clothing for APC.
Christmas has designs for more than T-shirts. He has designed full athletic suits, a camping shirt with a large Colorado flag on the back, women’s handbags, hats, hooded jackets both sedate and vivid enough for the skater set.
APC’s senior vice president of business development, Bob DeMasse, says designs might also feature certain aspects of Denver’s role, such as the so-called “greening” effort.
And APC plans to work with local vendors who might have ideas for other products to sell.
The company says it will open its website for retail and wholesale customers in the first week of May. The Web address is . The merchandise should be in stores shortly after.
Burns said Boston’s host committee made between $20,000 and $30,000 from its cut, which she said was not more than 20 percent of the marketer’s gross.
The Denver contract will return 15 percent of gross wholesale sales to the host committee.
Burns says that, for Denver, even if APC doesn’t make much more than past marketers, the economic impact is a gift that keeps on giving.
“I think anything the host committee can do to market the city beyond the four days of the convention is a worthwhile effort,” Burns said. “If someone buys the sweat shirt and wears it out there in his community, it prolongs the longevity of the event.”
Chuck Plunkett: 303-954-1333 or cplunkett@denverpost.com
