Rep the city. Together.

The Winnipeg Sea Bears needed a merchandise strategy to boost YoY sales, and someone to lead creative.

After an extremely successful inaugural season of merch sales, focused mainly on supplier-designed basic apparel, the Winnipeg Sea Bears pro basketball team contracted me to create a merchandise strategy, and oversee the creative direction of merch going forward.

The strategy consisted of creating merch tiers to hit different price points, align with the fashion-forward nature of basketball culture to create more premium lifestyle offerings that fans would want to wear outside of game days, and curate a few selective product collaborations each year with sought-after local brands. It was also important to showcase and merchandise the items well, to position them more as a fashion brand than team merchandise. I oversaw sourcing, design, and production, and organized a photoshoot to be used in marketing campaigns.

Year two sales were expected to dip after a successful year one, but the 2024 line was successful in increasing sales and brand affinity – with fan reaction to the new offerings being resoundingly positive.

After breaking league records for merchandise sales in year one, it was expected sales would decrease sharply in year two due to market saturation. By implementing a strategy to add more premium, fashion-forward designs, year-over-year sales actually increased 5%. This was despite the supply challenges of frequent sell-through of hot items.