Jobs & Careers: University student starts sports jersey business

University of Technology (UTech) student, Yohan Rose, has turned his sporting passion into a growing business.

Rose, 22, decided to venture into the business of selling jerseys of international and club teams last year. He told THE STAR that though profitable, the business can be tricky due to the unpredictable nature of sports.

“With football, there’s a lot of emotion behind it because if your team is not doing well, you won’t necessarily want to put out the effort to get some merchandise of the team. In a nutshell, football is topsy-turvy, so it depends on how the season is going to determine sales. Football, basketball fans buy jerseys … sports fans overall,” he said.

Though it started out as just a hobby, Rose realised the earning potential and so transformed it into a bona fide business called Rosez Sportswear. He believes there are people out there like him who love their respective teams so much, they would like to have branded jerseys as souvenirs.

“That was the main choice for the business drive … it’s something that I love, so I decided to give other persons the opportunity to have what I have, that is the pleasure to have some memorabilia of a team,” he said. “Other than that, you’ll have persons who want it for the looks, persons just wanting it for wanting it sake, not as a die-hearted fan. So I’ll always have sales from those persons. It’s a large base of potential customers.”

Various strategies

The entrepreneur employs various strategies to boost his business, including giveaways and promotions.

“I post questions on my Instagram page and if you get the questions correct, you get heavily discounted merchandise. I have university specials, I have a ‘schoolers’ special. It’s a niche-like business, so you have a lot of persons who are interested, but they might not be able to afford it,” he said.

With the market inundated with ‘knock off’ replicas, Rose is assuring customers that his products are ‘top-notch’.

“The market is saturated when it comes to the amount of persons now doing the jersey business, but the big difference between me and some of the main competitors is the quality of goods,” he said. “I promise my customers that no matter what, I will always give them the highest quality jerseys that are available on the market. I’ve seen competitors promote a certain quality, but when the product is given, it’s nowhere close to it.”