Brand Bolt hike sales

Usain Bolt may have stopped running for the past few days but his latest performances are having significant impact in the local economy, especially for one company that manufactures leisure wear.

Sun Island has been reporting incredibly high volumes of sales of the Usain Bolt line of leisure wear including t-shirts, polo shirts, caps and yoga pants since the world’s fastest man set new records in Berlin starting last weekend. Things have been flying off the shelves ‘incredibly fast’, said Amy White, Manager of Product Development and Design at Sun Island. “We’ve sold out our stock twice. As we produce they’re gone.”

Yesterday at the company’s retail outlet along Molynes Road in Kingston scores of customers – young and old – were observed buying armfuls of Usain Bolt t-shirts, caps, yoga pants among other types of leisure wear.

The company had entered into an agreement with Bolt to produce a line of leisure wear bearing the image and signature of the sprinting phenomenon following his exploits at the Olympics in Beijing, China last year when he won gold medals and set world records in the 100 metres, 200 metres and the 4 x 100 metres relays.

White revealed that as soon as Bolt set the new world record of 9.58 seconds in the 100 metres last week Sunday afternoon, they set about creating designs and starting producing shirts and other types of clothing. She said they even worked through the weekend which is unusual for them. And as soon as they were done local retailers and ‘people off the street’ have been snapping them up.

Bolt, she said, has been having a huge impact on the company’s bottom line because otherwise sales have been slow, largely due to the state of the economy. The Bolt factor also extends to other businesses as well. White said all the raw material that is used to manufacture the Bolt line of product is made locally, so his success is helping keep people in their jobs.

With that in mind she hopes she does not see an end to the spike in sales anytime soon. However, realistically she believes the current sales boost will last between two and four more weeks by which time new designs for the Bolt line will be ready for sale.

The Bolt line she says has generally been successful as there has been a steady flow of sales since its creation last year. The current spike, White says, is similar to what the company experienced following the 2008 Olympic Games.

Bolt has had a similar effect on product manufactured by his main sponsor Puma that reported that all their product that was brought into Berlin for the 12th IAAF World Athletics Championships, sold out before the championships ended on Sunday.

Market research has also shown that since Bolt’s exploits in Beijing in 2008, his media market value has been estimated at more than 230 million euro or more than US$320 million. The media market value is tantamount to the amount of money Bolt’s main sponsors Puma would have to spend to get an amount of exposure equal to what Bolt has given them in the market place.