Apparel companies are shifting their focus to recreational athletes, which is good news all round, writes Emmet Malone.
It's a long time ago now, but I once spent the run-up to Christmas working in Dublin's Virgin megastore which, among other things that year, was doing a hot line in videos of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
As part of the store promotion, one of my unluckier colleagues had to wander around all day in a dwarf outfit. The sight of him sweatily stubbing out a cigarette in the staff canteen and cursing as he hauled the costume's head back on, in response to a call on the public address system for Dopey to go to the video department, was something to behold. Clearly, Grumpy would have been more appropriate.
Quite how people run 26 miles in a novelty outfit has held a particular fascination for me ever since, especially since I realised that I could manage barely half that distance in what I had previously reckoned to be pretty much ideal running gear - a cotton T-shirt, shorts and socks.
Not for nothing, I realised, as my feet blistered and I struggled under the weight of my absorbed sweat, do the big apparel companies spend millions each year turning oil into new synthetic materials and then giving ever more convoluted names to the results of their endeavours.
Worldwide, the business is worth about €150 billion, with Nike and Adidas the two biggest players. The best available guess for the Irish share of that is some €500 million, although that includes many shoes and tracksuits that will spend a lot more time being worn in supermarkets and fast-food restaurants than anywhere near a football pitch or running track.
As the leisure market stagnates a little, however, greater emphasis is being placed on selling to people such as recreational footballers, swimmers and runners, and while Asics is the leading brand in the latter sector, Adidas is using things like its involvement with the marathon and Race Series to make up ground in a lucrative, growing market.
"We produce equipment for 26 of the 28 Olympic sports but football is our biggest business," says Paul Moloney, a former athletic scholarship student in the US who now heads up Adidas Ireland. "Our running product probably wasn't the best over the years but that's changing now. We're gaining credibility among runners - one of our shoes recently got five stars from Runner's World in America - and the greatest trouble we have now is probably getting people to try our shoes on.
"Through things such as the Race Series we've been able to establish contact with, maybe not the better club runners, but the growing number of people who are into running and are looking for information about what's the best thing to wear."
This is something that's going to wipe moisture away from your skin rather than retain it, while keeping chafing to an absolute minimum. The technical T-shirts given to participants at the end of the Phoenix Park races are an entry-level example of a product on which you can spend a lot of money.
"We were looking at ways in which we could put back into the market as part of those sponsorships and the technical shirts seemed a good idea," says Moloney. "There's been very good feedback since and you see quite a lot of people out doing their training runs in them, which is great."
While the biggest names continue to carve up the bulk of the market, a number of smaller, specialist brands have built a following, with the likes of Ronhill, Mizuno and Pearl Izumi all in evidence at bigger races. "For us the half-marathon was great because we were keeping an eye out and there were a good few people in our stuff, which was a big step forward on a year ago," says Gerard Kirwan, Pearl Azumi's distributor in Ireland.
The story of Kirwan's involvement with the company is a little like that one about the guy who liked the electric razors so much that he bought the company. In this case, the Dubliner, who runs a marketing company, was maintaining a blog on his training for last year's marathon (his fifth in a row) which developed into the website gersrunning.com.
"That proved amazingly popular and through it, we ended up in contact with all sorts of people. The brand got mentioned a bit and we liked it a lot. Then we ended up talking to somebody who was pretty high up in the company in America. Everything else just sort of followed from that."
Though well known in various other parts of the world, where it is generally seen as a premium brand, Pearl Izumi had a tiny profile here. With nothing like the advertising or promotional budgets of the established firms, Kirwan has been energetically promoting the product at grass-roots level, providing prizes for relatively low-level races, looking to form partnerships with the odd club and seeking to back athletes who might not already be tied into bigger rivals.
"We're already working with Rosemary Ryan who got the Olympic-B qualifying time in Berlin, which was great," says Kirwan. "That's how we see it going forward for us, by continuing to sponsor races and staying close to the runners."
The annual Simon Five-Mile Fun Run takes place in the Phoenix Park this Saturday at 10am. Details are at www.funrun.ie or 01-6715551.