You may have seen our recent announcement Friday about our newest agreement with Indiana University! Here's a little background on what this recent news means for Campus Ink from our CEO, Steven Farag.
The Origin
When we built the Illini Store at Illinois we realized that the best vehicle to power it was the athletes. When building a licensed brand, we could pour dollars into traditional marketing but we thought, who better to market a college brand than college athletes? So that's exactly what we did and we reversed the equation.
The beauty of this is that the athlete gets to sell their own licensed apparel and make a real rev share on each sale. On average, the players make $10 - $15 per item, depending on the item that is sold.
Player Attribution at Checkout
Whether or not their name or number is on the back, every sale on the store has financial attribution to the athlete as an affiliate. On checkout, fans can pick which player they'd like to support.
We stumbled on this, thinking that everyone wanted a player's name on the back of it. What we found is that fans just wanted to support players, so we built the option to work both ways and it took off. If a player has a great game and you wanted to support them you can buy an item and select their name at checkout.
As we've met with multiple universities, we have found that this is one easiest and most effective ways a school can show what #NIL means to their athletes.
Potential athletes and prospects can transparently see how much a school cares about #NIL based on the resources and partnerships they've fostered. If high schoolers see what current athletes are doing for their apparel, they'll get excited about the opportunities ahead of them.
I commend Indiana and Illinois for thinking about ways to make their #NIL opportunities for current athletes world-class.
What is Ahead
Our plan is to roll out Indiana's store over the next eight weeks. The team will be building a completely custom solution, onboarding the athletes by the team, and teaching them how to market and earn money for their #NIL.
While they have rigorous academic and athletic schedules we know they're not going to build their own websites, design their own apparel and manage it all. That's where we come in.
People like Laura Graves and Michael O'Neill are the backbone of these builds ensuring that the framework is set to handle all transactions, licensing, and compliance.
Meanwhile, Broc Anthony preps creative by building fashion-forward core products.
Adam Cook and Sean Ellenby lead athlete success and development actually teaching them how to market properly through the correct channels and effectively communicate with their audiences.
The team puts an incredible amount of emphasis on developing one another, our clients, and our athletes. We believe the t-shirt comes last.
More school announcements coming soon, stay tuned!
-Steven