Eintracht Frankfurt kicks for sustainable and original merchandise

Eintracht Frankfurt plays in the first division. For once, this statement does not mean the Bundesliga. According to a study by Cum Ratione gGmbH, the club also scores as a ‘sustainable fan shop’ and is one of the top 5 Bundesliga clubs in this respect. When shopping, Martin Schittko, Head of Product Management in Merchandising, pays attention to the use of textile seals such as GOTS (Global Textile Standards) and Fair Trade, as well as to ecological and social standards within the supply chain. Product quality and environmental compatibility are very important to him.

The situation is different for manufacturers of counterfeit jerseys: Fake fan clothing and the misuse of the logo and club name do not fit into the fan article policy of the Hessians. In order to get an overview of where brand abuse is taking place and to what extent, Schittko has been working with Sentryc, a provider of brand protection software, since December 2021.

Fan shop for future

Peaked caps in summer, hats, scarves, gloves and seat cushions in winter: when the stadium was still full before the pandemic, the club’s core range consisted of items for going to matches. With Corona and empty curves, the sales distribution in the merchandise area changed significantly, and Schittko’s team kept finding new ways to pick up the fans of the Eintracht Frankfurt sports community – SGE for short – with suitable items. Backpacks made from upcycled car scrap or wooden coasters from regional funding workshops – the selection of the product world and its suppliers makes it clear where the product range on the Main is going. Sustainability, short delivery routes and support for the local economy are core values ​​of procurement.

Fair play with suppliers

Awareness of choosing environmentally and socially compatible fan articles has already arrived in the Bundesliga. Like many other clubs, Eintracht Frankfurt works with a pool of suppliers who specialize in various aspects of sports, the Bundesliga and merchandise. Some of them, like the North German company Brands Fashion, have been using organic cotton and certified clothing for years. “We chose GOTS and Fair Trade certified textiles of our own accord. To do this, we rely on a trusting partnership with the suppliers,” emphasizes Schittko.

“Made in Hessen” is also part of Eintracht Frankfurt’s production strategy, making a clear statement in support of the local economy. “Until recently, almost nobody on the customer side was interested in the country of manufacture,” says Schittko. “But the fact that we work with local partners is increasingly appreciated by the fans, who are also a reflection of our society.” The SBU’s supplier pool is made up as follows: 30 percent from China, 30 percent from others countries in the Far East, 40 percent from Europe and 20 percent from Germany. The immense increase in transport costs and unmanageable supply chains make the inner-European market, in contrast to the non-European market, interesting for production in the long term.

The sales network should also remain manageable. Online, the Frankfurters rely on their own fan shop as the primary sales channel. “We also sell our products through licensed dealers, but not through third-party platforms for strategic reasons. That doesn’t fit with our brand values ​​and how we want to work,” reports the product manager.

Trick or jersey

Fake jerseys and other unlicensed merchandise keep popping up on the major online marketplaces. Martin Schittko has been dealing with the topic of fakes and trademark infringements since he came to Eintracht Frankfurt in 2012. The player jerseys from the official outfitter Nike are very popular with product pirates. “We see direct plagiarism almost exclusively with jerseys,” he reports. “And as soon as there are extraordinary sporting successes, such as a cup final or participation in the European Cup, the suppliers of fakes sprout like mushrooms and flood the network.”

The jersey, which is newly designed and produced every season, plays a major role as a top seller and crowd favourite. Even if the fakes are getting better and better, experts like the sales team in the stationary shop quickly sense whether the shirts that unsure fans bring to check are real. The speed at which counterfeits are coming onto the market is also amazing. “We will officially present the new jersey on Thursday and if someone from the team flies to Turkey on the following Monday, they can buy it as a plagiarism on the beach,” Schittko said angrily.

When fakes are in season

The SBU also had to experience how quickly counterfeits circulate during the pandemic: The club sold protective masks in the Eintracht design – exclusively in stationary stores in Frankfurt and online via the official fan shop. A short time later, the masks appeared on numerous platforms on the Internet. Schittko then turned on a trademark lawyer who forwarded each individual link to the platforms with the notice that it had to be removed. Removing all fake offers from the platform was a full-time job that cost many hours of work within the association.

In addition to direct counterfeiting, Eintracht Frankfurt mostly has to deal with trademark infringements. These are products that the club does not have in its range, but on which the club’s logo can be seen. According to Schittko, the ‘brand abuse’ is a lot about on-demand designs such as tracksuits that portals offer in 20 possible colors and on which retailers then print different logos such as Eintracht Frankfurt’s.

“Groups are the problem on Facebook,” reports Schittko. Craftsmen and small business operators offer on-demand fire barrels and other items with the logo, without necessarily being aware of what they are doing. Such deals spread like wildfire in fan circles. Even if the merchandise team addresses these people directly and points out the abuse of the trademark, the association’s hands are tied because sales communication mostly takes place in private chats.

The product manager experienced his first aha moment in terms of brand abuse about six years ago. Chinese suppliers had a strong presence on social media and offered T-shirts printed with Snoopy, the Simpsons or Batman, for example. These characters were shown as fans of different clubs, sometimes with a top from Eintracht, sometimes from Hertha BSC, and the ads were played out for the respective fan groups. In the meantime, Facebook blocked the ad, but it kept reappearing. A huge trademark infringement overall, against which the clubs were legally powerless. Operators from Asia, often Indonesia, played cat and mouse with clubs and their lawyers for years until Facebook stopped the dilemma.

Overview thanks to forced break

More and more cases of abuse accumulated in Martin Schittko’s mail account over the years. Colleagues reported finds from Amazon, eBay classifieds and other platforms to him. Checking and processing the cases robbed him of valuable capacities. During the pandemic with its empty stadiums, he commissioned fan shop employees to plow through the marketplaces and social media channels for two weeks to get an overview of where Eintracht Frankfurt products are illegally circulating. He brought structure to the business, merging channels, products and links. The extent of the trademark abuse came to light. “Here we first sounded out the cases that did not constitute trademark infringements,” recalls the head of department. “These were Eintracht-related products for which we have no trademark protection, such as colored willow trees that the supplier calls ‘Eintracht-Bäumchen’. There’s no logo on it, it doesn’t say Eintracht Frankfurt. No chance! Only the word combination Eintracht with Frankfurt, our abbreviations and the logo in variants are protected.

Until the end of last year, the team was always out and about in marketplaces, writing to its own legal department in the case of particularly brazen violations, stating that there was a clear need for action – poking around in the dark and also time-consuming.

Argus eyes instead of fighting windmills

Internal scouting made Martin Schittko want to delve deeper into the market and get a realistic overview. “What annoys us is that people are enriching themselves with our brand and taking advantage of it. Fans buy a shirt in the shop for 90 euros and see that what appears to be the same shirt is available on Alibaba for 15 euros. That’s not exactly beneficial.” In addition to the masses, the merchandise manager is also struck by the fact that the products are not produced sustainably and some of the product quality is poor.

In order to take systematic action against trademark infringements, Eintracht Frankfurt decided at the end of 2021 to work with the Berlin software provider Sentryc. The tool of the same name searches marketplaces and other platforms for plagiarism and cases of brand abuse. With machine learning, the software understands better with each find how fakes can be recognized and how the providers proceed in the case of harmony. “First and foremost, we wanted to try out brand protection for ourselves, see what happens and gain experience,” Schittko recalls. “We can’t currently understand how big the business behind it is because we don’t know how many items are sold. But we now know where the jerseys are offered and to what extent. Our goal, which we can achieve with Sentryc: get counterfeit products and trademark infringements off the internet quickly and easily.”