Can anyone explain the lack of CFL merchandise out there? How come this league does not stick its teams logos on a thousand products like the NFL does? I went to the CFLShop.ca site looking for some adult t-shirts and all I found for Argos fans was an Infant Playtime Tee. Even though the Riders site had more items, all the T-shirts seemed to be geared towards youths and infant sizes. Where is an avid CFL fan (especially one that does not live in Canada) suppose to get his stuff? Any suggestions. I think the CFL is loosing a ton of money by not merchandising its products properly. Even my mid-level college team (Marshall University) has tons more merchandise available to their fans than I can find to fill my CFL fix. I'll be in Toronto next month, where is a good place to load up on Argos gear (since I can't buy squat off the web)?
You could try Jersey City: http://www.jerseycity.ca/
I'm pretty sure that's where my sister got my retro Eskimos long-sleeve shirt. Actually, I believe that's also where she got my yellow Eskimos hat.
I agree 100%. I've lived in Whitehorse, Yukon for about 16 years (I grew up in Saskatchewan) and have never seen ANY CFL gear on sale here.
That is until last weekend when I walked into Canadian Tire and saw some CFL barbecue aprons. First time ever. I seriously almost fell over. Only trouble was, no RIder stuff. But a step in the right direction anyway.
People pay money to place brands on items. Every apparel company wants the right to place the NFL logo on its stuff. It is not the CFL's fault. I'm sure that if everyone and their dog went to the CFL with a bank cheque, there'd be all manner of junk available with this or that logo. My advice, go the Pro Shop of or local team (on- line or in person) and buy, buy buy! Also, check put the Canadian football Hall of Fame, they can use the money!
LTF
Bombers have got a great store. You can get everything from clothing (infants, children, women's and men's sizing) to wall-to-wall carpet to barbeque covers with a Bomber logo on it. I don't think it's shown on the store website but there are even Bomber jacuzzis for sale.
I live in London and CFL jerseys and other merch are just about impossiable to find. You would think TiCats stuff would be here since they have been making an effort to reach out to London by having a practice here and a couple other public apperances last year.
The CFL needs to create a better store for sure. The need to be selling everything the NFL does. Also the cost of a blank Jersey is doubled if you want to put your own name on it. That is so crazy. The need to get a cheaper printer.
Too answer your question WV, try Sports Centre, or toronto sports shop both are on Yonge Street (west side) South of Gerrard. North of Dundas.
…not as ironic as you’d initially think
I noticed that CFL merch was more available before the league made Jersey City the sole supplier of CFL stuff. Once Jersy City took over, there was less available even in their stores (CFL only given a small corner of the store in any of the stores I've been too and that's in Alberta where the CFL is popular).
Before, I could order stuff directly from the Stamp's Store in Calgary, but cant' do that anymore. There also seems to be less Grey Cup merch available in the past few years than there used to be. I've tried ordering stuff directly from Jersey City, but usually they say can't bring it in because it's not available.
I say to get rid of this exclusive deal and make CFL merch available in more stores (like it used to be).
My sister has ordered me a few things from Jersey City's website, and she's never had a problem.
Edit: You could also go to Game On Sports. They might actually be cheaper. They have the Eskimos polo for $39.99, whereas Jersey City has it for $69.99. That seems like a bit much for a polo.
People, the CFL is not a rich league. It doesn't have oodles of cash laying around with which to finance all kinds of fancy doodads and gear to ship to retailers, assuming there are retailers (in Whitehorse for example) who would actually order the stuff.
Now if a retailer actually pre-orders, say, 5000 CFL keychains (or jerseys or whatever), that's different. Then the league can go to a manufacturer and purchase the stuff, mark it up, and ship it.
So if you want that stuff either order it on-line or bug your local retailer to order it for you.
the season has not even started yet, when the season starts usalyy stores like game on, blue line sports, stock everything in cfl colors, the cfl is never a popular item in the off season, same as the canucks when it is off season there is not much merchandise. there are a lot of stores out here that carry cfl merchandise during the cfl season.
That’s not true! I was in Vancouver for a week during the beginning of the CFL season last year and even though the Canucks had been out of the playoffs for a couple months, I saw more Canucks merchandise in the sports stores than the CFL, NFL, MLB and NBA combined! They had very little in the way of CFL items and if you were a fan of any team othe than the Lions, you were S.O.L! They had the odd non Lion item but VERY LITTLE!
As for the topic at hand, YES, THE CFL NEEDS MORE MRECHANDISE!!!
I find that some of the items they do have are really far fetched and I can’t see them being HUGE sellers. For example, I can’t see logo’d golf bags flying off the shelf at a feverish pace, I can’t see people lining up in hoards to by a BBQ cover with their favorite temas logo on it. I can’t see tonnes of women ordering those hideous halter top things from the CFL store.
Now yes, you will find more items at a team store than you will online but why can’t they make those things available for the CFL store to sell? Heck, why not sell them on the online store and mark the prices up a little? Other leagues do it!
Now my suggestion for thos looking for a decent online place to by CFL merchandise is to check out River City Sports. They have a pretty decent selection of stuff.
You know what else they need to do? At least for Riders gear, they need to stop using the word "Hoody" and start using the word, "Bunnyhug."
I actually find more gear on the cfl.ca shop than I do at the Riderville Shop.
game on only has argo's jerseys... and yes more main stream stores need cfl merch!
Retailers can not be forced to take things to sell. Though many are paid by distributors for good space in the store. If you do not see things in you local store ask the manager to bring it in.
I am a little surprised at the comment that one poster made about not being able to buy stamp stuff on line. They were the only team not to go over to the new pooled website management, so it is odd. Most other team sell on-line stuff.
http://shop.riderville.com/WIth half of all CFL mech sold being Saskatchewan stuff, maybe there just does not seem to be enough demand in other areas?
About 6 weeks ago maybe more I tried to order some Argos and CFL stuff from the CFL shop on this site, among the items I wanted was an Argo jersey with no name on the back. An e-mail was sent to me from Jersey City saying they had no Argo jerseys in stock in my size (XL) with no names on them but would be happy to send me an Argo jersey with Joseph's name on it. I declined the offer and cancelled my order as the jersey was the main item I wanted for my trip to the Moncton game in September. I live in Nova Scotia and let me tell you there is next to no CFL gear in any stores here (I don't remember the last time I saw CFL gear here) mainly because we have no CFL team close to us (Montreal being the closest). Anyhow I sort of got the feeling Jersey City was trying to sell me a Joseph jersey because noone else wanted it (including me) and they thought they could send it to some guy in Nova scotia as he didn't know any better. I really found it hard to beleive they had no blank Argo jerseys to sell me. My order was about $200 Cdn. but I cancelled it as I could not get what I wanted. This is an example of potential lost sales for the league that should never happen.
I really have to agree on this, when I visited your fine country in 2008 I was amazed how little CFL merchandise was on offer. I spent time in Montreal(during Grey Cup week and even went to the game), Hamilton, Ottawa and spent most of my 3 months in Toronto and the surrounding suburban areas. Ok now I know Toronto isn't the most obsessed CFL city unfortunately but I figured that in a place like the Eaton centre I could have found something argo related. But I did and it was a John Avery jersey on the clearout rack!. Ok i found a few other things once I dug a little deeper around the city and to be honest I got most of my gear at the Argo games but even there the selection wasn't great and very overpriced.(The Argos also don't have an online store, why not? 
)
Since then I have tried to find stuff online which is really a waste of time, like one of our friends previously stated the only argonauts t shirt that is available on the OFFICIAL CFL store is a youth shirt. That has been the only item available in that category since the site had it's makeover which has included a full season and the Christmas holidays. I think we have to admit that it's pretty pathetic.
Look at Saskatchewan, I read somewhere they account for almost half of the leagues merchandising sales(correct me if I'm wrong), granted not all teams have the same rabid fanbase but I think the riders have taken it upon themselves to make sure there is a substantial/fair amount of merchandise available to fans, online, at the games or even in the stores in the city/province only adding to the teams public profile and as result impressive financial turnover the last few seasons.
In an era where the CFL is experiencing popularity that it hasn't had for years (or ever, depending on who you talk to) would it not be seen as wise decision to make more merchandise available for the fans, I'm sure there is the demand for it, and if there isn't much available how will the league ever know?. As a result the league enjoys having an even greater presence in the marketplace, raising it's profile to compete with other professional leagues in the country/outside the country(NFL, I'm looking at you 
) on the shelves and make more money for itself to invest in the league again.
At the end of the day when I can't get an Argos hoody, t shirt or even a bloody pennant to put on my wall then I'm pretty dissapointed.
To consumerism! :cowboy:
I've brought up my own story here before, but I'll mention it again.
This past fall, I was looking for Tiger-Cats clothing in Kingston. I went to the nearest sports store. They had NFL stuff, European soccer stuff, and New Zealand All-Blacks stuff, but I couldn't spot anything from the CFL. After a minute or two of looking, one of the staff asked me if I needed help finding anything. He said "We've got some CFL footballs, but that's it. There's another store that would've been the only place that would sell CFL clothing, but they're out of business." Kingston, by the way, is the home of Queen's University, the most recent winners of the Vanier Cup (the Canadian university football championship cup, for those of us not from Canada). So there is something of a football culture here. I guess it hasn't been turned into a marketing opportunity yet.
A couple weeks later, I went to a Sportchek in Hamilton, home of the Tiger-Cats. I happened to spot what looked like Cats jerseys, and upon closer inspection, that was indeed what they were. But the name on them was Casey Printers, who had not been on the team for almost a year at the time, and who seems to be disliked by the majority of Tiger Cat fans. As if I was going to spend $110.00 on that! So even in the host city of the team, you can't count on stores to sell up to date merchandise. Of course, if you're in Hamilton, you do have the option of going to the Tiger Cats headquarters, where they have lots of merchandise to choose from (with a scant collection of other teams merchandise). I'd recommend going there before anywhere else in Hamilton. The Cats also seem to have a pretty good online store, but I don't want to buy clothes online.
On the whole though, based on my experiences, there's clearly a merchandise availability problem. What's not clear to me is why the problem exists. I don't know whether the teams and the league aren't pushing stores to carry their merchandise (and up to date versions of it at that) or they've tried but the stores aren't interested.
I went to a Sports Chek in Hamilton last summer when I went to the Calgary game, and I bought two Tiger-Cats t-shirts there.