Sports Fan’s Dream Becomes Dodger Reality

Sports fan J.J. Matis can hardly wait for the Dodger game Thursday night. But she’ll be watching the action at the Dodger merchandise stands more closely than the battle with the Anaheim Angels on the field.

Instead of home runs, she’ll be rooting for stadium cash registers to jingle with sales of her new baseball-shaped $40 Dodger backpack, which debuts at the ballpark Thursday.

“It’s a little overwhelming but I’m confident they will sell out in the first home stand,” said Matis, 30, who will be wearing the prototype that originally sparked the Dodgers’ interest almost three years ago.

The ink may still be drying on her marketing MBA, received two months ago from California Lutheran University, but Matis has already made serious headway against long odds in her effort to launch her creation in stadiums nationwide.

Despite her student status, lack of a sales track record and a manufacturing facility, Matis has earned a coveted license for her round vinyl backpack sporting the Dodger logo from Major League Baseball Properties Inc. and won an initial purchase order for 200 backpacks from the Dodgers. That order was recently boosted to almost 300.

If successful, what began as a school project will earn the energetic Sherman Oaks resident a personal share of the $15.8 billion in annual sales of licensed sports merchandise estimated worldwide by License magazine.

Also keeping close score of sales of the new backpack will be Mike Nygren, director of Dodgers Merchandise. Nygren’s early support was key to Matis’ decision to obtain the license she needed from major league baseball to put the L.A. Dodger logo on her backpack.

“My first reaction was: That’s unique and I think our fans would like it,” Nygren said.

Not many of the dozens of ideas he’s pitched each year--from Dodger pens to Dodger cars--get that response, he acknowledged. In fact, most of the 2,000 Dodger items on sale in the ballpark were developed in-house by his department, which generates roughly 80% of all new product concepts. Existing licensees or manufacturers, often with their own teams of artists generating new ideas, account for most of the rest.

“She really bucked the odds in a big way and you have to give her credit for that and for her perseverance and tenacity and, I guess, her professionalism,” Nygren said.

Those qualities coupled with the strength of her product idea and the Dodgers’ interest helped Matis earn a license agreement from major league baseball, which controls the logos of the major league teams. Her license came even as Major League Baseball Properties has trimmed the number of licenses granted.

“It’s a unique product and we like to accommodate the clubs,” said Denise Lawlor, a licensing supervisor for novelty products at Major League Baseball Properties in New York. “If it is successful for that level, in the near future we can expand to other clubs.”

That’s Matis’ ultimate goal.

She would like to consider the eight-month concession supplier license she was granted, which allows sales of her Dodger baseball backpack at the stadium and through mail order only, as a first step.

Her goal is to get a national retail product license from major league baseball that would allow her to use logos from all 30 teams, the All-Star game and the World Series.

That dream helped to motivate Matis during the lengthy and sometimes exasperating effort to win her first license.

The process seemed easy enough: Come up with a great idea, file a license application, wait for an answer. But as Matis discovered, the devil can lurk in the details.

Starting from scratch, she had a hard time digging up the embroiderers, zipper makers and other specialty vendors she needed to create a professional prototype. And not all of them took her inquiries seriously.

“They weren’t expecting this woman just coming out of grad school to be involved in sports,” Matis said.

Fulfilling Major League Baseball Properties requirements also took longer than expected.

Matis devoted 11 weeks to the detailed business plan the organization required. The organization’s major concerns were financing and manufacturing capabilities.

“I’m not Nike,” said Matis. “They want to know it’s not going to be a problem to pay my 11% royalty fee.”

The organization required her to reveal her investor (her dad, for $250,000), pressed her to nail down a minimum order from the Dodgers, and sought assurances that all her costs were covered.

By August 1999 she had the business plan, the application, the license form and the prototype in the mail to New York. She mailed a duplicate package in February, after learning the organization had lost the first.

Within a few weeks of her May 13 graduation, Matis received her license agreement.

“My role model is Fred Smith of FedEx,” said Matis, explaining how the global company began as a school project Smith pursued despite setbacks.

She’s also encouraged by early interest from other teams. Under major league baseball rules, all teams have access to new product concepts approved for any single team.

“I wondered at the time whether she would have the patience and the wherewithal to go through the process,” said the Dodgers’ Nygren. “As it turned out, she did.”

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Making the Team

Here are a few sources for information about sport licensing:

Major League Baseball Properties Inc.

MLB controls trademarks or service marks of Major League Baseball, including names, nicknames, logos, designs and slogans of the teams and their mascots.

* Contact: 245 Park Ave., New York, NY 10167.

* Phone: (212) 931-7900.

* Web site: https://www.majorleaguebaseball.com.

Los Angeles Dodgers

* Contact: Dodgers Merchandising, Dodger Stadium, 1000 Elysian Park Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012-1199.

* Phone: (323) 224-1500.

* Web site: https://www.dodgers.com.

License!

This monthly trade magazine covers licensing deals, players and trends worldwide. Annual subscription, $49.

* Contact: (888) 527-7008 (subscriptions).