Packaged for Profit
Pro-Ad Shows Its Stuff
November 13, 2007

If you build it they will come. If you package it well, they will buy it. Welcome to the world of Pro-Ad Sports, where manufacturing high-quality licensed apparel is a way of life … and merchandising is like a religion.

“We offer display-oriented apparel lines,” explains Marketing VP Leah Daniel. “Pro-Ad displays can go anywhere in a store and generate impulse purchases. Consumers are getting high-quality, screen-printed graphic tee-shirts and fleece at a great price, and the mass merchants make good, healthy margins. We have created a neat, clean organized way for the stores to encourage sales of college shirts and other licensed apparel.”

Pro-Ad offers adult tees, crews and hooded sweatshirts, as well as youth tees and (for 2008) fleece tops. Their products are licensed by MLB, NFL, NBA, and 80-plus colleges, the college business being their specialty. Among its mass-channel clients are Wal-Mart and Dollar General. Pro-Ad was recently honored as a Dollar General Pride Award Winner in the apparel division for 2007.

Coming up with merchandise that sells itself requires a lot of time and thought on the service side. According to Daniel, this is an area where Pro-Ad excels.

“We do lots of work with buyers planning the merchandising program—which stores get which schools, timely replenishment—we've invested a lot on the service aspect of our company.”

Pro-Ad Sports is also known for its popular Mug Tee, a 100% cotton tee-shirt packed into a 33-ounce screen-printed drinking mug. The company has had success with this idea since introducing it in the 1990s and has expanded into such products the T-Ring Binder and StuffedTees, which are screen-printed shirts compressed into different sports shapes. Point of sale displays are, needless to say, a big part of the concept.