Reebok restores Fight Kit availability
Nearly all fighter-branded “kits” beyond the best-selling handful like McGregor and Rousey were temporarily removed from Reebok’s online UFC store.
Reebok Fight Kits were unveiled back in June with a presentation that was probably state of the art in the New York fashion industry, but appeared to the uninitiated to be an outtake from Zoolander 2: Bluier Steels.
The idea was that fighters would have branded gear and would get a cut of the sales. Now it appears that the line may have been drastically scaled back.
The site has a function to Find Your Favorite Fighter. If Ronda Rousey is your favorite fighter, you are in luck. If she is not, earlier today, maybe not so much.
Steven Marrocco has the story for MMAjunkie.
Reebok’s online UFC apparel site now offers just seven fighter-branded kits and a smattering of other t-shirts, leaving out several active champions and hundreds of others on the promotion’s roster.
A customer service rep for the apparel maker today told MMAjunkie that the kits were pulled because there were a LOT of unhappy parties and mentioned the controversy over fighter payouts, but did not know when the decision to pull the uniforms was made.
PR rep later told MMAJunkie that it was a technical issue that Reebok is working to resolve. The PR rep added that the customer service rep quoted above was very misinformed.
Many of the jerseys have now been restored online. There are multiple potential explanations for the termporary slashing of the line. One possibility could be they all sold so fast there was no time to replenish the stock immediately. Another could be that fight fans don’t want to dress up like Uno cards, and Reebok pulled the non selling kits, only to restore them when there was pushback. Or the issue could simply be a technical glitch.
A glitch by Reebok’s efforts in the MMA space would not be a shock.