BRANDS
ver the past few years We Are Nations has established itself as one of the leading apparel companies in esports, and 2019 proved to be another incredibly busy year for the company.
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AUTHOR Andrew Hayward @ahaywa
Nations launched an official store for Riot Games’ League of Legends Championship Series (LCS), acquired Sector Six Apparel, established a partnership with the Walmart Marketplace, and teamed up with sports apparel brand ‘47. Add to that fresh alliances with teams such as Cloud9, OG, and North and it felt like there was always something new happening with the company. “We grew tremendously last year, but the growth came from places that we necessarily didn’t expect, and quite frankly didn’t come from places that we thought maybe it would,” CEO Patrick Mahoney explained to The Esports Journal. “Things came out of left field that were just amazing.” Mahoney pointed to G2 Esports’ thrilling season in League of Legends as a prime example of a successful line, as merchandise sales grew and grew as the team won at the Mid-Season Invitational and then made it into the World Championship finals. “The numbers that we sold rivaled mid-level Premier League teams, we’re told. We’re really starting to hit some real numbers,” said Mahoney, based on conversations with contemporaries within the traditional sports space. However, esports merchandise is a much newer space and uncharted territory in some respects. What constitutes “big numbers” at this point is still something that’s being discovered. “We’re still trying to determine where all of these levels are—no one really knows,” he added. There’s an interesting opportunity for merchandising to be part of storytelling as well, Mahoney explained. Besides
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Patrick Mahoney CEO We Are Nations
Expansion, apparel as storytelling, and partnering with the ULT brand riding the wave of G2’s League success, he also called out a limitededition long-sleeved OpTic Gaming jersey that We Are Nations produced to mark the team’s final Call of Duty World League run, prior to this year’s franchising push in Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty League. The mix of nostalgia and immense love for the
team and brand made it an enormously popular item for the company. “It just checked all the boxes. There’s an emotional aspect to it. It was like, ‘OpTic is dead, long live OpTic. It just really hit an emotional chord, and it was for the fans. There were a lot of references to the previous players in the art, and it was like a celebratory piece,” Mahoney explained.