UO’s retail revision

There might be a Duck Store housed in the same building where the University of Oregon football team practices, the Moshofsky Center, but if you want to buy officially licensed UO football gear online, the UO Athletic Department wants you to go to its website, www.goducks.com.

That’s always been the case. Only now the website directs fans to an outfit based in Florida, not the online Duck Store.

The UO signed a five-year deal earlier this month with TeamFanShop, or TFS — a Jacksonville, Fla., company that provides online sales of athletic apparel for university and professional sports teams — to be the UO’s exclusive online retailer of UO sports merchandise.

When it comes to online sales of popular UO merchandise, the Duck Store, the independent, nonprofit retailer that began as the University of Oregon Bookstore in 1920, has been demoted to second string.

Prior to Dec. 4, the date of the UO football team’s final regular season game against Oregon State University in Corvallis, visiting www.goducks.com, sent Internet users to the Duck Store to peruse and purchase UO sports gear. But on the day of the biggest Civil War game ever, at least for the UO, goducks.com switched to TFS.

Why?

One word: Money. And lots of it.

“This should be a very significant revenue-maker for the department,” UO senior associate athletic director Joe Giansante said Friday from Denver International Airport, where he was catching a connecting flight to Eugene after a meeting with TFS executives in Florida.

Online sales of UO items through TFS in the two weeks since the Ducks qualified for a first-ever BCS National Championship game berth have earned the UO Athletic Department a whopping four times more in commissions than what it made in all of 2009 through online Duck Store sales, Giansante said. Out of respect for the Duck Store, Giansante would not give a dollar amount for those sales. But he did say that only 9 percent of the sales through TFS were customers in the Eugene-Springfield area. Two of the largest buying areas nationally were Texas and the San Francisco Bay area, Giansante said.

The UO contract requires TFS to offer at least 1,250 Ducks items on the site and gives TFS the exclusive right to sell and market BCS T-shirts with UO football coach Chip Kelly’s Win the Day — WTD — slogan on them. The contract was acquired by The Register-Guard through a public records request.

“Oregon is a national brand,” Giansante said. “Serving fans around the world is our business. We know some people are upset (about the deal),” he said. “But we want to be successful and balance our budget … and that’s what we’re going to do.”

The UO Athletic Department is one of the few self-sufficient departments in the nation, relying on no public funding through the university, thanks in large part to generous donors such as Nike owner Phil Knight.

And the recent deal with TFS, which Giansante said now has deals with 44 major university athletic departments in the nation, is just the latest move in a strategy to maximize the Oregon brand and athletic department revenue.

Two years ago, the UO signed a 10-year deal worth more than $67 million from sports advertising, promotions and endorsements, with IMG, one of the nation’s largest sports, media and entertainment companies.

Although Jim Williams, the Duck Store’s longtime general manager, said he had no problem with UO’s decision, several loyal business partners of the Duck Store said they did.

“I think everybody who knows about it has strong feelings about it,” said Louisa Miller, chief financial officer of decal maker Potter Manufacturing in Eugene, which has made UO decals for the Duck Store for decades. “I think the way (the UO) did it was kind of sneaky weasel.”

Miller said she and several other area suppliers to the Duck Store have recently been contacted by TFS to sell their products exclusively online with the Florida firm. Miller said she declined.

“I have no interest in doing business with them,” she said. “I would never jeopardize my relationship with the Duck Store. We are very loyal to them because they’re a great customer. They’ve been with us for a long time. They’ve grown and only tried to offer the community more.”

Brian Swallow, TFS’s vice president for sales and marketing, returned an earlier call seeking comment and left a voicemail but could not be reached later Friday.

An owner of a local company that makes products for the Duck Store, who agreed to be quoted only if he could be anonymous because of his relationship with UO, said he’s outraged by the deal. “I have a real problem with that,” he said. “They’re taking all this money out of Oregon and sending it to Florida.” The business owner said he has spoken to Williams, who expressed disappointment in the deal. But Williams said that was not the case.

“They made a decision to go with them for business reasons,” he said. “From our perspective, it’s not a controversy. People might be trying to make it into a controversy, but it really isn’t. We’re not taking it personally.”

The Duck Store, which has three outlets in Eugene, three in Portland and one in Bend, has no formal contract with the UO Athletic Department, Williams said, but does give it 9 percent of all UO-related sales based on licensing fees. The Duck Store still sells UO gear online through its own website.

Although Giansante said TFS went live at goducks.com on Dec. 4, Williams said he was not notified until last week of the deal, which ends on Aug. 1, 2015. Williams said he was given a chance to bid on it but was not accepted.

The UO contract with TFS guarantees the UO a minimum of $653,333.33 during the term of the contract. UO will receive 28 percent of total retail sales, except for “specialty goods” — goods offered exclusively by TFS at its online store — for which UO will receive 32 percent.

The guaranteed amount UO receives will be increased by $150,000 if the Ducks win the national championship against Auburn Jan. 10, or in any year of the contract.

In addition, by written request from the UO athletic director, TFS will provide a 25 percent discount and free shipping to any UO employee.

One of the final stipulations of the contract is this: “TFS shall carry a large assortment of Nike products, including sideline apparel.”