For those of us who like to spend our hard-earned cash on WWE merchandise, there's a little bit of a sense that their merchandise hasn't really got to grips with the modern day. When your favorite webcomic can manage to sell printed leggings, thick hooded sweatshirts and customized high-tops, but a company as huge as WWE hasn't worked it out yet, it can feel a little stuck in the past.
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| From the number of categories, you'd think each one was stuffed with options - but you'd be mistaken. |
In the first place, there are a lot more options for men than there are for women, from sweatpants and hoodies in men's sizes only, to some t-shirts only being printed in men's styles rather than having a girly-fit option. That being said, when items do have a girly-fit option, the fabric is much thinner, and in some cases, almost completely see-through. The sizes struggle, too, with a women's medium varying between t-shirt styles and colors of fabric used, which is utterly unacceptable. As a personal example, I've not got a single Seth Rollins shirt in a women's size, because when I went to buy one, they only had his merchandise in men's style shirts. I have a Dean Ambrose shirt in a girly-fit, and a women's medium is perfect - but my Sting shirt in the same women's medium is too tight, clingy, and opaque. It makes shopping for merchandise frustrating and annoying.
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| Women don't wear t-shirts, right? Or at least not as often as men do, surely? |
Sure, you might argue that the women get more than the kids do, and you'd think that kids would be the biggest market for merchandise. But realistically, it's us big kids, the adults who live in wrestling shirts, who are the biggest monetary draw for WWE and their merchandising. But does it make sense, in this day and age, to print designs solely for the men? What baffles me even more is that shirts for those I would consider female crowd pleasers by my own (possibly biased) opinion - Dean Ambrose, Dolph Ziggler, Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins - have shirts where there are no options for women, and that just seems stupid. Why miss out on money by not making women's sized shirts for wrestlers you know are over with that demographic?
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| Hustle, Loyalty, an extra 48 items if you're in North America! |
Finally, and I recognize not a lot of people will care about this, but the discrepancies between the number of items available in WWE's North American shop and the EuroShop are, frankly, appalling. I've taken Cena as an example here, because he has the largest amount of merchandise out of anyone on the roster, and the numbers are 85 products for the main WWE shop, and 37 for the EuroShop. Every time I go to buy a shirt, I feel a little bit like Vince had a really bad trip to France as a child, that maybe a seagull stole his baguette. Or possibly that he thinks Europe is on another planet, and it takes ten weeks to get here.
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| In transit, orange shirts may turn green. |
This was never more apparent than over Christmas, when the US got gingerbread man ornaments, and ugly Christmas sweaters, and while we got the ornaments eventually - they lasted two days, so I think Vince said "Just send ten, Europe doesn't celebrate Christmas" - I was heartbroken that I'd have to pay another shirt's worth of shipping if I wanted to get one of the sweaters. We're used, in Europe, to America getting everything first, from video games to cartoons, but to not have certain items of merchandise at all just seems bizarre. Europe is no longer sixteen weeks away by boat, Vince, you can airmail things now, it's okay.
Have you felt short-changed by any WWE merchandise lately - or have you got any ideas we haven't covered? Let us know in the comments!
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