adidas Chair & CEO Herbert Hainer said that the company “will have jerseys modeled on those worn by" Knicks G Jeremy Lin "ready for sale in China in ‘the next couple of days,’” according to Michael Wei of BLOOMBERG NEWS. Lin currently has a deal with Nike, and Hainer declined to comment on whether adidas “will try and sign Lin to a sponsorship agreement.” Hainer: “Will he become a superstar? We don’t know. We are absolutely happy with our portfolio. But Jeremy Lin definitely has the potential” (BLOOMBERG NEWS, 2/20). Modell's Sporting Goods' N.Y. location has been “overwhelmed by demand for Lin merchandise.” The store as of Thursday had "sold 50,000 units of Lin paraphernalia, including T-shirts, jerseys and towels, and had 168,000 on order.” Modell’s CEO Mitchell Modell said, “It's like Christmas in February. We can't take it out of the boxes fast enough.” Modell's has “hired printers in Brooklyn and New Jersey” to supplement supplier adidas (CRAINS' N.Y. BUSINESS, 2/20 issue).
HAVOC AT HARVARD: In Boston, Brendan Lynch notes Harvard Univ., Lin’s alma mater, has been “selling replicas of the No. 4 jersey Lin wore while playing for the Ivy League school from 2006 to 2010 for $100, with proceeds benefitting the Jeremy Lin Foundation.” The charity “helps underprivileged people and communities in the San Francisco Bay area, where Lin grew up” (BOSTON HERALD, 2/21). Meanwhile, in N.Y., DiGiacomo, Griffith & Caparell note “enterprising Harvard students are capitalizing on the Lin-derella story.” Undergrads are “buying up replica Lin jerseys sold around campus for various fundraisers and at Crimson games and selling them on the Internet.” The Harvard jerseys “retail for about $100 at Harvard but fetch nearly twice as much on eBay” (N.Y. DAILY NEWS, 2/21).
REFRESHINGLY NEW: The WALL STREET JOURNAL’s Jason Gay writes the hype surrounding Lin “feels new because it's skipped the reliable, proven pathways to glory.” In the past, an athlete “did some exciting things, and the marketers would take over and build a myth.” Gay: “They’d do an expensive 30-second spot. There would be a billboard. A sneaker. A quickie book. Maybe a wooden cameo in a Hollywood movie. This is not that. This is 0 to 100 mph, with no stop on Madison Avenue or Beverly Hills.” But "Linsanity" also feels like “an organic, emphatic reversal of the contrived way stars have been packaged and processed, in sports and beyond.” Maybe soon the marketers “will prevail and there will be Jeremy Lin commercials and Jeremy Lin toys and candy and sneakers and toothpaste.” Lin will become “something else then, something big and conventional, closer to what we've seen before.” Gay: “But right now it feels new. It still feels real. It still feels fun, despite the Nets. It feels beautifully Linsane” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 2/21).
OVERCOMING OBSTACLES: In L.A., Bill Plaschke writes Lin has “dribbled America into the previously quiet corner of its casual prejudice and lazy stereotypes of Asian Americans.” The “true beauty of his story is in awareness of the ugliness that has been found there.” When America now looks at Lin, it “should see more than an Asian American kid from Harvard who overcame ignorance at every level to become a star guard” for the Knicks (L.A. TIMES, 2/21).
