Full Throttle

Recently friends and fellow bloggers Charlie and Bob has occasion to attend recent Cup events at MIS & Watkins Glen. (lucky stiffs!)

Both reported, as well as others, that many of the schwag trailers were holding discount sales on Dale Jr. merchandise.

As an aside and in apparent anticipation of a Gibbs move to Toyota Smoke’s schwag that featured images of Chevys was also discounted. But I digress.

The evidence is no longer anecdotal, it’s fact and measured in cold hard cash. Or rather the lack of cold hard cash.

ISC, who co-owns Motorsports Authentics the operation that runs most if not all the schwag trailers parked trackside at NASCAR events has reported a sudden loss of revenue.

During a conference call with investment analysts July 10, executives at ISC “attributed as much as half the shortfall — up to $10 million — to the slowdown in orders for Earnhardt’s goods.”

Ouchy-wah-wah! That’s tough to take even for a company with such a high bottomline.

But it should be noted part of the slowdown in July applies to “orders from the company’s biggest retailers, including Wal-Mart and Target, especially for apparel.”

Others selling Jr. schwag haven’t noticed a drop in sales and haven’t been able to keep up with demand:

“If any dealers are saying they’re losing sales, we’ll buy the stuff off them,” said Jeff Barnes of City of Industry-based High Banks Racing, a leading Southern California merchandise dealer. He said he had no trouble selling out his supply of Earnhardt’s die-cast cars, including an Elvis Presley theme that will adorn Earnhardt’s car at Richmond (Va.) International Speedway on Sept. 8.

JR Motorsports, Earnhardt’s licensing company, says it has detected the same falloff in the market as Motorsports Authentics. “It feels like an after-Christmas sale right now,” says Joe Mattes, vice president of licensing.

So is that a glass half full, or a glass half empty?

Hell if I know, but I tend to believe sales are being driven by the discounts and because revenue loss by Motorsports Authentics is due to lost wholesale orders their numbers won’t mean much until Red Nation officially becomes Red & Green Nation.

One other note, when the Dale Jr. Elvis-themed cars were offered on the shopping channel QVC this month, 15,000 cars were gobbled up in minutes.

But was that the Dale Jr. Effect, or the Elvis Effect? I mean think about it, some nutjobs think Elvis is still alive and walking the mountains of Bolivia. It’s not that far out of the question some saw the word “ELVIS” on their idiot box and got all Pavlov dog-like and dialed QVC without knowing it.

At the risk of being stoned to death, some of the Dale jr. schwag purchasers are pretty Pavlovian themselves. All they need is to come up with a few thousand Dale Jr. impersonators to match those of Elvis and they’d be pretty much even.

Now I better get outta here before the rocks come flying my way!