Estudiantes de La Plata will take a new step in Argentine soccer by creating their own sports brand that will be in charge of making and marketing the shirts and all the official club clothing. The “Ruge” brand will be launched in January 2022.
According to the club, Ruge will be a sports brand that will reach the general public, and which, in turn, will have the license to develop the club's official clothing. Starting in January 2022, he will dress the club's first men's and women's soccer teams.
“In the next stage, the sportswear line will be developed, and as the agreements with the brands that wear them today are finalized, RUGE will begin to put its stamp on the different disciplines of the club”, they anticipated.
This year, the institution terminates the contract with Under Armour, the clothing brand that made the jerseys currently worn by the team.
In a note published by EFE, Martín Carbonari, the manager in charge of the project, explained: "No offer really convinced us. Mateu Sports, which is a chain of sports venues in the city of La Plata, approached us with the offer to face the development of an own brand and we found the proposal very convincing due to the state of the market".
"With this type of decision, the clubs gain brand image positioning. Having your own brand not only allows you to work on football but also on all disciplines of the institution. And then, the business of sports clothing”, said the leader who thought that this initiative could be replicated by other clubs.
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And he highlighted: "Getting a strategic partner, like we have, that accompanies you, especially with the investment stage and production monitoring, you can really obtain very good economic results."
When announcing the novelty months ago, the president of the club, Martín Gorostegui, explained: "RUGE is an inclusive concept. It includes us all. It is our way of transforming everything we feel for our club into a garment. It includes us As a family, it includes our values, our way of seeing what sport is and club life".
For his part, Vice President Juan Sebastián Verón had highlighted: “RUGE is the essence of the club, always pushing the limits with an ambitious project. As it happened to us with the stadium, surely we will be talking about this new project in the future".
“Today, brands practically do not offer sales royalties”
To explain the decision to reject offers from five brands and create their own, Carbonari explained: “Today, brands in the market practically do not They offer sales royalties. What they offer you is simply a certain number of garments and that's as far as the agreement ends, after the sale goes well or badly the club receives absolutely nothing”.
And he concluded: "It is important to point out that Ruge is a sports brand. Many times in these types of projects they talk about the club's own brand and then it is understood as simply making the institutional clothing, and here we go beyond. We go beyond that, it is the creation of a sports brand, it has to be very clear. And there is also the possibility of dressing other institutions, they can be football or not".
