#7: Marketing & Merchandise

So far we’ve talked about fixes that are pretty direct—bringing sports back to LB (shore sports and football), and pitting the city’s two schools against each other.  This idea is a little less specific, but at least as important: we need to encourage a cohesive sports identity, through better marketing, and with more city and school merchandise.

For marketing, consider that Long Beach is one of the US’ biggest cities, larger than Cleveland, Miami, Sacramento, New Orleans, and Honolulu.  But those cities have projected an image of themselves so that the nation knows who they are, even without visiting—the image the nation has of Long Beach is bleary and distorted, and tends to leave out some of our nicer aspects.  If we want to continue to draw big athletic events and be taken seriously as the youth and prep sports mecca that we are, we’re going to have to do a better job putting that image out there.

One way to start is to make it easier for people to wear their pride on their sleeve, as it were.  The LBSU store on 2^nd Street has been filled every time we’ve been in there, partly because of alumni, but also partly because of how excited the community has been to buy Long Beach-branded merchandise.  Before the store opened, well-known options were pretty much limited to the Long Beach Clothing Co. at the Pike, whose fashion is primarily aimed at the youth market.  So, budding entrepreneurs, get on it: start websites, open stores, hold design contests for Long Beach State students.  We’d love to see the LB high schools get together and get a store together on 2^nd, where each school could have their own corner to sell merchandise, which isn’t always easy for fans and parents to find. 

It’s easy to be a fan of Long Beach sports—it shouldn’t have to be hard to explain to people from out of town why, and it shouldn’t be hard to show your support with decent merchandise.  If Honolulu and Cleveland can figure it out, so can we.