Sir, – I note that a UK company confident of ultimate victory produced 18,000 T-shirts with the message “England World Cup Winners 2022″ (Sport, December 13th).
Having lost to France, they had a dilemma. However, the managing director of Wholesale Clearance UK appealed to England fans to purchase the shirts as a piece of history and a reminder of how well the team performed.
The price, however, was reduced from £29.99 to £9.99.
There was a much better solution found by a Kerryman in 1982 when he printed thousands of T-shirts with the message “Kerry Five in a Row”. When the overwhelming favourites lost to Offaly, he adopted a different strategy.
An Irish businessman in Singapore: ‘You’ll get a year in jail if you are in a drunken brawl, so people don’t step out of line’
Protestants in Ireland: ‘We’ve gone after the young generations. We’ve listened and changed how we do things’
Is this the final chapter for Books at One as Dublin and Cork shops close?
In Dallas, X marks the mundane spot that became an inflection point of US history
He swallowed his pride and took the shirts to Offaly where they sold like wildfire.
If the UK company adopted a similar strategy and sent their merchandise across the channel to France they would not only have cut their losses but would probably have enjoyed a considerable mark-up on the original price of £29.99.
Sometimes it’s better to just suck it up. – Yours, etc,
JOHN MacINERNEY,
Swords,
Co Dublin.