Wall Street Journal January 30th 1995

 LONDON -- When England's Manchester United unveiled its new blue and white team shirt earlier this month, angry fans and politicians booed the move as a greedy merchandising ploy.

Many parents, after all, had just bought their kids a yellow and green team shirt for Christmas, and weeks later, it was already out-of-date. Frustrated fans, tired of buying a new team uniform each season, began to search for something that would stand the test of time.

At The Old Fashioned Football Shirt Co., which offers among other things, a circa 1963 Manchester United shirt worn by the team when it won the FA Cup, the phones started ringing.

"We had people calling, saying they're fed up with buying new team strips {jerseys} every season," says owner Alan Finch. "They're swinging over to a more traditional shirt they can wear at any match and still represent their team."

Sports fans the world over, nostalgic for the days before corporate sponsorships and mega-salaries, are discovering that they can go home again.

Companies like Toffs and Britain's Screeching Parrot are scoring big with traditional lace-up soccer shirts from the late 1800s to 1930s and roundneck shirts from the glory days of English football in the 1970s. And in the U.S., Philadelphia's Mitchell & Ness and Seattle-based Ebbets Field Flannels offer old-fashioned baseball attire from the days before baseball strikes and millionaire players.

Although the nostalgia sports companies concede they barely make a dent in the billion dollar business of sports merchandising, they say a growing disillusionment among fans about the commercialism of sports is generating brisk sales.

"It harkens back to a fairly innocent era," says Lisa Cooper, vice president of Ebbets Field Flannels, which sells reproductions of wool-flannel baseball jackets and shirts worn by minor league and Negro League teams of the early- and mid-1900s. "It goes back to the days when quality was more important than quantity, and there wasn't as much greed on the part of the players and the owners."

The nostalgia craze started in Britain in 1989, when a company calling itself Arkwright took out an ad for old-fashioned shirts in the Leeds United fan magazine. From there, the company grew to sales of about #750,000 ($1.19 million) in 1994, but management disagreements between the partners caused Arkwright to close its doors.

But convinced there was still a booming market in old-fashioned football shirts, a former Arkwright employee Helen Weatherhead started the business over again last April under the name Screeching Parrot.

Ms. Weatherhead says she gets calls every day from fans looking for a 1930s or 1970s version of their favorite team's shirt. The company reported #100,000 in sales its first nine months, and has signed deals with West Ham United and Queens Park Rangers, among other clubs, to supply old-fashioned shirts to club shops.

"It started out as a rebellion against all the sponsors names on the shirts, and kits that keep changing every season," says Ms. Weatherhead. "Now it's a cool thing to wear. Everyone wants to be seen in one of these shirts."

At The Old Fashioned Football Shirt Co., known as Toffs, the company now carries 130 styles dating back from 1885 to 1975, and expect to generate #1 million in sales this year, up from just #50,000 five years ago. Although most of the company's business is in Britain, Mr. Finch says the company distributes its products in France, Germany and Australia, and has just signed a distribution deal with a Japanese retailer.

Part of the appeal of the old shirts is that they're produced with a thick, heavy cotton, rather than the thin nylon sported by the players. And in past decades, corporate sponsors like Sharp video cameras and Compaq computers weren't splayed across the front of the uniform.

"You can never be out of fashion with these now," says Perry Conway, company director of London sports retailer Soccer Scene. Mr. Conway sells about 60 of the shirts a week, or about one for every 10 modern team shirts sold by the store. "No one will be seen in last year's shirt, but if it's a shirt from 30 years ago, that's fine."

And for fans, the old-fashioned shirts tap into memories of the teams they followed as children. One of the most popular shirts is one from the 1970 Chelsea team, the last team to win England's FA cup. Andrew Clark, a customer services operator for a parcel courier business, owns a 1977 Manchester United jersey. "As a young lad, that was the first team I remember," says Mr. Clark.

James Brown, the 29-year-old editor of the men's magazine Loaded, owns an early 1970s yellow Leeds United shirt from Arkwright as a reminder of the days when no one really noticed what the players were wearing. "You should let the football do the talking, not some sponsor's name and some dodgy designer," says Mr. Brown. "This has that element of nostalgia, that free-flowing rock star feel that some footballers had in the late '60s and '70s."

The makers of nostalgia baseball wear say their business outside the U.S. is still small, but interest is growing from Europeans who see the wool and leather jackets as a fashion statement. And the old-style products carry modern-day prices. A 1952 New York Dodger jacket from Mitchell & Ness sells for about $400. A jersey from Ebbets Field, like one from the 1942 Negro League team the Kansas City Monarchs, sells for between $140 and $175.

Although baseball isn't popular in Europe, many nostalgia baseball fans are. On the European MTV Sports show, host Dan Cortez is often seen sporting a Mitchell & Ness old-fashioned jacket over the black-and-gold flannels of the Pittsburgh Crawfords Negro League team. Other notable fans include actor and film director Spike Lee, actress Jamie Lee Curtis and rock star Bruce Springsteen.

And interest in the clothing is expected to flourish with the release of two new baseball movies in the U.S., Cobb, about the life of baseball player Ty Cobb starring Tommy Lee Jones, and a Spike Lee movie about the life of Jackie Robinson for which Mitchell & Ness is outfitting all the actors in vintage uniforms.

Not to be outdone, some of the big sportswear manufacturers have also tried to get into the nostalgia game. About 18 months ago, Umbro International, supplier of uniforms for Brazil and several English football teams, began producing their own '60s- and '70s-style cotton shirts. The move made sense given that Umbro has been supplying shirts to English teams since the 1920s.

But retailers say they flopped with fans. The cotton fabric was too thin compared to the fabric used by companies like Screeching Parrot and Toffs, and the big uniform maker insisted on putting the Umbro label on the shirts.

Accuracy is everything in the nostalgia business. Companies spend months pouring through team records, archives and newsclippings to find authentic patterns and designs for their clothes.

And the old-fashioned football shirts often were nothing more than a plain jersey, and didn't even sport the team logo, let alone an Umbro label.

"They didn't put their heart into it," says Soccer Scene's Mr. Conway. "They thought they'd have a dabble because they made the original shirts, but the original shirts never used the Umbro logo. That put the traditionalists off."

An Umbro spokesman said the company currently isn't offering any nostalgia shirts, but may introduce a new style from time to time. As for criticisms about the accuracy of their old-fashioned shirts, Umbro responds that promoting their own brand name is part of their business.

But the popularity of nostalgia products already is having an impact on even the modern-day team uniforms. West Ham United's uniform is now based on the style worn by the team in the 1970s.

And even the controversial new Manchester United uniform harks back to the early days of English football. Woven amidst the blue and white stripes are the names of 101 past and present Manchester United players.

"Even in the modern uniforms," says Umbro marketing director Peter Draper, "nostalgia plays a big part."

Credit: Special to The Wall Street Journal Europe