Club Statement

Upon thinking about this whole saga from yesterday, I’ve came up with what I think has happened here.

yesterday was a great start to the day, sales through the roof, all looking rosy and money flying in from all angles.
SD have seen this and had a wee think about it, and as they will be stocking the kit anyway clearly as per a side arrangement with Castore and nothing directly to do with the club, SD, or more likely Ashley and his PR gang decided to wind it up a wee bit.

they knew exactly what they were doing when releasing that post and video, they knew exactly the type of publicity it would get.

I would call it World Class trolling. That’s all it is.

look beyond the trolling, and you’ll find there’s nothing in it whatsoever.
If the club have denied there’s any agreement, we should trust what the club have said. Anything other than that trust for the club would be madness.

trust the club, they won’t let us down.
 
I don’t really see what the purpose of dealing with Sports Direct is. People can make the excuse that it’s the UK’s biggest distributor, but what Rangers fan is really going to buy from them? It’s a bit of a PR own goal from Castore because regardless of the club’s statement rightly or wrongly there will be people out there now who are suspicious of Ashley lurking in the background.

The message to buy direct from Rangers needs to be made very clear.
Whilst no Rangers fan will buy from him, having the shirts for sale in the SD shops gets it out there to folk who aren't aware of the history with SD and brings us in new fans.

I'm down in England, only sports shop is SD round here. I'm positive people will buy the kit if they see it, it looks good, Castores brand carries a bit of prestige and having it in front of them makes it easy. That then gets folk involved in the club, and their next purchase is through The Rangers Store because they have an interest in the club and like the quality of the kit. We've a lot of Chelsea fans round here, I expect to see a few Gers shirts over the summer.

The club is now getting a fair deal in kit sales, SD cannot change that. He'll be paying Castore for every shirt he takes, and we'll get a percentage.

The big thing to take from this is that SD no longer has and control. He cannot change or influence our kit deal. He's the one who is effectively working for us in selling the kit.

New kit is stunning, IMHO, Castore clearly know what they are doing, let's enjoy it.
 
We do have some absolute weirdos in the support who seem to take more pride in being proven right about a player, about the board etc than they do in the club progressing well

I think in a perverse way some actually enjoy the drama and negativity. At the end of the day SD have purposefully went out of their way to cause confusion and create trouble and a whole load of folk took the bait - hook, line and sinker, to the point of accusing the club of having lied and conspired to pull the wool over the eyes of the fans. But it’s not the club’s fault, or anyone else’s fault that they couldn’t wait a few hours for clarification before wetting their knickers and jumping in with both feet to accuse the Rangers of being up to no good, regardless of the lame duck attempts at justifying such behaviour.
 
Pretty sure a business can't just lift official material from another business.

They are lifting it from YouTube, it was put out to be shared, it wasn’t copyrighted like, say, RTV highlights are.

If the club put goals on YouTube for instance they can’t stop fans sharing them, but if they’re lifted directly from RTV, they can.
 
We do have some absolute weirdos in the support who seem to take more pride in being proven right about a player, about the board etc than they do in the club progressing well
No we don't. I'm fairly pragmatic about this, but I still understand the sensitivity of others. The bottom line is that this is a very good deal for Rangers, possibly the best we could get, and we have little choice but take it in that context. This suits Castore, and it suits us, in many ways it's the perfect fit, no pun intended, and hopefully it lives up to its promise.
 
They are lifting it from YouTube, it was put out to be shared, it wasn’t copyrighted like, say, RTV highlights are.

If the club put goals on YouTube for instance they can’t stop fans sharing them, but if they’re lifted directly from RTV, they can.
Not to use as part of another business.

I'm still wary about Ashley,what other retailers are claiming exculsivity and what other retailers are even advertising our gear?
 
Are people really that stupid? Castore said they want to market us world wide, before they need to do that they need to market us nationwide, so it's down to JD or SD. If SD want to buy them and sell them to people all over England I have no problem, we are trying to get new fans down there with the Gerrard factor etc.

The vast majority on here will buy direct from Rangers, if people who like us/have a passing interest or just like the shirt want to buy it from a SD store then so be it. Given the Romanian posts all over our social media and with some members on here now Hagi will also shift a few shirts to Romanians all over the UK too.

Would I rather it wasn't SD? Yes. But we are where we are and they are one of the 2 nationwide sports wear companies so we have to deal with that. I won't be giving them a penny but it's not just about the hardcore fan, it's about getting sales we wouldn't normally get.

It still leaves the question why that wasn't mentioned in the fan media chats Castore did? That's my only issue, all they had to say was 'we'll be aiming to retail in major high street retailers, at a fair deal for us and Rangers. That could include SD'. To use your words, how can people be so stupid as to not understand why that's a slight concern for some people? It was literally only last year we had all this with Elite and to date we're still due £3m from them, of OUR fans money.
 
It's not right that Ashley makes money from our shirts even if it's at the same level as other retailers. I'll still be maintaining my boycott of SD and will get my Rangers gear from the Rangers store or Castore
 
The club refer to having an exclusive deal with Castore. This is not true if Castore have done a deal with SD.
Yes buy direct where possible.. Still does not negate the fact that SD will be given thousands of our kit to flog and profit from our support.
None of us expected or wanted this. I get the feeling the club knew fine well that this is something that annoys the support
The Club do have an exclusive deal with Castore though.
They are the only company to exclusively make, supply and distribute our kit.
Who Castore sell to is none of our business. We hire them to sell us mich as possible for as much as possible.
How they achieve that doesn’t matter to us.
It really is that simple
 
Hows it wrong? You've just reiterated what I posted but in a different way. However you want to dress it up, Castore didn't have to deal with them.

The problem is Castore have sold out in some sizes, those sizes will end up with SD.


You honestly think Castore are going to stock SD before restocking themselves?
 
Not to use as part of another business.

I'm still wary about Ashley,what other retailers are claiming exculsivity and what other retailers are even advertising our gear?

I thought, and I might be wrong obviously, that if you put your videos on YouTube without restrictions then anyone can use it and embed it on their website as YouTube get the hits and the creator gets any revenue it generates if it’s watched enough times.

You can put things on it and limit how it’s shared but I don’t think that was done.

I guess everyone is wary, but giving the benefit of the doubt to Rangers and Castore, if all they are doing is selling stock to a third party there’s no real issue.
 
If the club and Castore had been more upfront about how their operation was going to work, it would have been avoided. The SD question was front and centre of people’s minds and they knew that and allowed people to think SD was a thing of the past. At the clubs instigation (through their leaks to fan groups) I’ve boycotted SD for years now, often at a cost to me in terms of convenience and money, so with all due respect, I’m not being made to feel like I’ve been a bad fan for questioning things when SD put out on social media they have an exclusive deal. These people profiteered from and severely hamstrung our club.
If people think that’s fine, then good luck to them, but the club have played this badly. By being reactive instead of proactive, they’ve allowed the possibility for people to think this is yet another false dawn.
Upfront about what?? That football strips are going to be sold in sport shops. I think that was pretty obvious. The anger from some people is utterly mental.

You want the strip? Buy it from Rangers.
 
No issues here, won't be stepping into SD and giving them any money. I'm sure any sane like-minded Rangers fan would be the same.
 
All the talk of Castore being sold out, have they said as much or was it a limited drop and they’ll do others through the month?
 
%^*& me its not difficult to realise that Castore as a business can’t refuse to sell to SD. It would kill their ambitions in football stone dead.
They want to get other clubs onboard, imagine they are talking to other clubs but have to tell them they don’t deal with SD.
The other clubs would laugh them out the door for refusing to deal with the UKs biggest sports retailer.
Not to mention Ashley would have us back in court claiming we were damaging his brand and hamstringing him against his competitors.
 
Upfront about what?? That football strips are going to be sold in sport shops. I think that was pretty obvious. The anger from some people is utterly mental.

You want the strip? Buy it from Rangers.
If there was nothing to see here, Rangers wouldn’t be putting out a statement at near 9pm. If it’s all OK now, brilliant, but don’t belittle fans with genuine concerns.
 
Honestly dont know why they didnt state this at day one. We would have all then made our peace with still having those cunts selling our strips at all.
At day one, castore would be agreeing deals with sports retailers to sell THEIR product.
WE make a percentage of ALL product sold.
Castore are the supplier and its THEIR job to sell them.
Contracts with retailers and castore , ie, terms of payments, don’t concern us.
Our control (fans) is where we spend our money on merchandise.
The % to Rangers will be the same wherever we buy.
The Rangers shop is being run by castore at their expense,
The retail outlets are at theirs.
The profit to castore will be the same.
 
Castore would not have paid us what they did if we insisted they didn't deal with SD.

Its OK for a Nike or Adidas to do that but Castore are a challenger brand and they can't grow into the UK sports market while turning their back on the largest UK sports retailer.

Rangers are going to be the 1st of many teams for them and they will want a relationship with SD going forward even if we don't.
 
You honestly think Castore are going to stock SD before restocking themselves?
Unless Castore can keep a constant flow of stock on their site then its not an issue. If come the 1st Aug and they don't have stock for sale and SD do, then this is where the problem kicks in.

Unless it is contractual, there is not one reason to be dealing directly or indirectly with SD.
 
Unless Castore can keep a constant flow of stock on their site then its not an issue. If come the 1st Aug and they don't have stock for sale and SD do, then this is where the problem kicks in.

Unless it is contractual, there is not one reason to be dealing directly or indirectly with SD.


Do you honestly think SD are going to be full of Rangers strips and merchandise?

They'll have a small section, just like they have for Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool etc.

They aren't a major player in our distribution.

Castore are well aware 95% of Rangers supporters won't buy from them, so why would they give them masses of stock?

Castore are our merchandise partner, not SD.

No chance they'll be giving SD stock priority.
 
The Club do have an exclusive deal with Castore though.
They are the only company to exclusively make, supply and distribute our kit.
Who Castore sell to is none of our business. We hire them to sell us mich as possible for as much as possible.
How they achieve that doesn’t matter to us.
It really is that simple
It took a while,
well said G71,
to the point, and accurate.
 
I sent Castore a DM on Instagram last night to ask when they will have more kits available to buy. They said more kits were coming soon and they will have a ‘mid August’ delivery date.

The obvious concern here is that means you’ll need to wait to mid August if you’re ordering online from Castore but SD will have them in stock from August 1st!
 
Will the megastore re fit be done by the 1st of August mate?


Honestly don't know mate.

There's others on here who have a far better handle of our merchandise than me.

Would certainly make sense to have it ready for the kit launch.
 
To the people wanting us to make sure Castore don't sell stock to SD do you remember what happened when we tried that with hummell? That's right it didn't work.

As much as it sticks in our throats this is the return of us normalising our retail operations. In actual fact it was all this exclusive crap that lead us down the garden path with JJB years ago
 
%^*& me its not difficult to realise that Castore as a business can’t refuse to sell to SD. It would kill their ambitions in football stone dead.
They want to get other clubs onboard, imagine they are talking to other clubs but have to tell them they don’t deal with SD.
The other clubs would laugh them out the door for refusing to deal with the UKs biggest sports retailer.
Not to mention Ashley would have us back in court claiming we were damaging his brand and hamstringing him against his competitors.
This without a doubt, not dealing with the big stores in Uk would kill their (Castore) business stone dead. Items like football tops, cricket and rugby need to be in all UK retailers, there high end stuff will be sold By castore itself. Exactly the same as the big/established sportswear manufacturers
 
Join the dots. SD only profit from Rangers merchandise if somebody goes in and buys from them. There is absolutely no reason for fans to go anywhere near them. Let the fat bastard walllow in his own grease.
 
Do you honestly think SD are going to be full of Rangers strips and merchandise?

They'll have a small section, just like they have for Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool etc.

They aren't a major player in our distribution.

Castore are well aware 95% of Rangers supporters won't buy from them, so why would they give them masses of stock?

Castore are our merchandise partner, not SD.

No chance they'll be giving SD stock priority.
Factor in our own premises (in addition to Ibrox store) that will be opening in time as well, it's down to the individual where to buy their tops, there are plenty of direct routes available no need to get from SD
 
Where’s that come from mate?

It was in the statement mate.


RANGERS & Castore are delighted to confirm the new Ibrox Retail Store will officially open on 1st August 2020, which will be operated by Castore as the clubs official retail partner.
 
If there was nothing to see here, Rangers wouldn’t be putting out a statement at near 9pm. If it’s all OK now, brilliant, but don’t belittle fans with genuine concerns.
I said from the start it was clearly sports direct trying to ruin it. It was so clear. Castore and Rangers has provided us info about the deal. So many just went straight to angry.

Rangers then released a statement they shouldn’t have had to make to calm people down. Yesterday was meant to be a celebration of our new strip yet people started calling the board everything with no reason.
 
Will the megastore re fit be done by the 1st of August mate?
RANGERS & Castore are delighted to confirm the new Ibrox Retail Store will officially open on 1st August 2020, which will be operated by Castore as the clubs official retail partner.
 
Seems pretty simple to me - don’t buy from SD.

They’re just another retailer who can choose to stock our kits or not, genuinely no big deal to me.

I fully understand Castore’s position as well. I imagine they don’t want to set a precedent of Rangers being able to tell them who they can and can’t sell to. It would be quite a dangerous precedent to set for a up and coming premium clothing brand.
 
If there was nothing to see here, Rangers wouldn’t be putting out a statement at near 9pm. If it’s all OK now, brilliant, but don’t belittle fans with genuine concerns.

The statement was in reaction to mass hysteria online. Imagine your own replies had the club not clarified things.
 
I said from the start it was clearly sports direct trying to ruin it. It was so clear. Castore and Rangers has provided us info about the deal. So many just went straight to angry.

Rangers then released a statement they shouldn’t have had to make to calm people down. Yesterday was meant to be a celebration of our new strip yet people started calling the board everything with no reason.
Mike Ashley and sports direct must have been laughing there balls off.they trolled us and far to many fell for it hook,line and sinker.
 
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