Rangers considering cutting Castore ties as David Edgar reveals merchandise deal latest

Rangers are hardly ticking along smoothly just now, however, they aren’t quite the shambles of more recent times in the 21st century.

 

One of the long-standing issues that has been put to bed is the court case with Elite that has now been settled when the Light Blues moved from a contract with Hummell and then to Castore.

There was litigation involving Sports Direct too, but for the first time in years, Rangers don’t have anything lined up in the docket.

Rangers considering new partners as Castore deal nears end

This is the fifth and final season with Castore which means that a decision has to be made on the club’s retail and merchandising partner.

In 2020, Rangers were an unknown quantity in terms of the legal battles, plus kit sales had dropped due to the shadow of Mike Ashley hanging over the club.

 

Now though, as an established European side that regularly makes the latter stages of the Europa League, and with expectations of winning regular silverware, the Ibrox outfit are a sure thing.

 

It is Rangers who hold all the cards.

 

Speaking on Heart and Hand’s Daily Update for the 20th of August, host David Edgar revealed that staying with Castore isn’t a foregone conclusion:

“Rangers deal with Castore runs until summer 2025 and I believe that Rangers are putting it out to tender.

 

“Castore still remain in a very strong position incidentally to retain the business so please don’t think that automatically means that Rangers will be moving kit supplier but Rangers are a more attractive brand now that we don’t have this (the Elite/Sports Direct court case) hanging over us.

 

“And obviously now, we have a demonstrably track record of selling kits that we didn’t really have without hassle, that we didn’t really have in 2020.”

It hasn’t always been plain sailing since Castore deal was signed

Cast your mind back to when the deal was agreed and the advent of Covid-19.

 

Castore were a relatively young company dealing with individual sports and generic sportswear items.

 

This was their first venture into football and it didn’t quite all go to plan as Tom Beahon from the company explained to The Athletic:

 

“We launched the partnership during COVID and the world was so crazy.

“You could get a call from your factory on a Tuesday saying, ‘Those 250,000 units we told you would be there by Thursday will no longer be there’.

 

“Like anything, you adapt and find solutions to the problems, but we certainly took some bruises along the way. We were like a youth-team player who got promoted to the first team very quickly.

 

“The feedback on the designs themselves was positive, but we had a number of challenges getting the volume of kits into the market. I don’t think anything could have prepared us for the avalanche of demand from the Rangers fans.

“They’re known for having a massively passionate fanbase and we experienced the full force of that. We ordered what we thought was a really good number of shirts that would satisfy demand for the first six months of the partnership, and when we’d sold out in a matter of hours we realised we might have underestimated… that was a classic example of, ‘You don’t know what you don’t know’.”