ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 27, 1996 TAG: 9608270153
SECTION: WELCOME STUDENTS PAGE: 6 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
Back in the old days - the heartbreak days of Hokie fandom - Legends Sporting Goods in Roanoke sold maybe 24 Virginia Tech jackets during the
Christmas retail season.
Last December, "Lord, I'll bet we sold 150 Tech jackets," said manager Mike McCoy. "One guy had a double extra-large, and he needed a large. I told him I couldn't get it until fall, and he says, 'That's OK. I'll keep it.'''
A man willing to keep a two-sizes-too-big, $124.99 Christmas present says a lot about what winning basketball and football seasons have done for Tech-based marketing.
Virginia Tech Bookstore head Don Williams describes the new enthusiasm for the Hokies' high-priced, trendy jackets made by Starter:
"When you go to the mall, if you have a Starter jacket, you have arrived."
The gravy train started to leave the station just over two years ago, when Tech's football team went to Shreveport, La., and returned with the
university's first bowl win since 1986.
That Independence Bowl victory was followed the next year by a Gator Bowl appearance, a loss avenged later that year by an NIT championship basketball team.
In January, the football team reached new heights. The Sugar Bowl championship sent 30,000 Hokies 'pokeying through New Orleans' French Quarter on New Year's Eve.
And let's not forget the ranked basketball season that followed. Sugar Bowl gear was spotted in Cassell Coliseum all winter, and all manner of Hokie maroon-and-orange merchandise racked up record sales.
"The Sugar Bowl really, really boosted our sales," said Richard Workman, manager of Leggett in the New River Valley Mall.
The bad news for Tech is that it earns no royalties from the $1.3 million in sales of Sugar Bowl-related items sold by spring, said Martha Geisen Hale, Tech's licensing director. That money goes to the bowl itself.
But even before the big New Orleans victory, Hale's office reported logo merchandise royalties for Virginia Tech worth $159,219 for the last half of 1995, up 13 percent from $140,975 for the same period in 1994.
Before that? Royalties reached $141,000 for the entire fiscal year ending June 30, 1993.
When someone buys a Tech sweat shirt or other licensed merchandise, the university earns 7.5 percent of its wholesale price. After expenses, the money goes back to the university to spend on merit-based scholarships. For 1994-95, that amounted to $165,518.
The phone's been ringing off the hook in Hale's office, where she oversees approval of all the Tech-related stuff you see sprouting on store shelves: classic desk clocks, Hokie Bird earrings, Virginia Tech spring water, a child's matching maroon Virginia Tech turtle neck and white-and-maroon striped pants. Coming soon to stores near you: Hokie pasta, shaped like little turkeys.
And the heavy little figure of a football player crouched down for kickoff? That's a prototype pawn for a chess set.
Last school year, Reebok, one of the big-league sporting goods companies, sent in a jacket for her approval. It's Hale's job to approve designs and protect Tech's logo trademarks.
"If something's rude, crude, or talks about alcohol or drugs, we reject it up front," she said. Beer cans, for instance, get the thumbs-down.
Last school year, 302 vendors had their designs for throw rugs, pen sets, tote bags, portable grills, stadium cups, hats, bean-bag chairs, mouse pads or glass tables approved through Tech's licensing office - just one stop on the road to marketing Tech products.
And distribution is growing statewide. More and more Northern Virginia stores are expected to begin carrying Hokie products, Hale said.
"Obviously, it shows that we're successful now," said Dave Braine, Tech's athletic director.
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON Staff. Marti Hale's job is to approve - orby CNBturn down - designs for products that will carry the Tech logo.