“An Adidas rep contacted us out of the blue and had interest in signing us to an all-school contract,” said Peninsula athletic director and head football coach Ross Filkins.
GIG HARBOR — Next time fans attend a Peninsula High School sporting event, they might see something a bit different on the uniforms: three stripes.
Peninsula is in the process of becoming an Adidas-exclusive branded school for its varsity sports. The process started more than a year ago.
“An Adidas rep contacted us out of the blue and had interest in signing us to an all-school contract,” said Peninsula athletic director and head football coach Ross Filkins.
Filkins took the proposal to student leaders and they explored it further. Adidas submitted a formal bid, which went against some competing bids from Nike and others. Adidas came out on top.
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“We put together a committee, which voted unanimously to go with Adidas,” Filkins said. “They were very aggressive. They wanted to sign us as a school — that was very clear.”
And yes — they made a significant financial offer.
For schools, the sizable discount on apparel is often the most enticing part of entering into an exclusive deal with an apparel company. But for some schools, it’s not all so rosy.
Take Gig Harbor High School, for example. Bob Werner, athletic director there, floated a similar idea a few years back, but several coaches were against it.
“The economic benefit — at the time — was minor,” Werner said. “It was nice but I didn’t want to force 50 percent of our coaches who didn’t want it to do it. I’d only do it if we had nearly everybody on board.”
Filkins didn’t run into any pushback from his school’s coaches. “Certainly, there are individual programs that had history with vendors, but everybody went into it with fresh eyes,” he said. “It was refreshing to see everyone come together, communicate and take a really open look at it.”
During the yearlong process, it became clear the school wanted to unify.
“They wanted to define what our school colors were, what our logos are,” Filkins said. “They wanted to rebrand and unify.”
In the past, different Peninsula programs have adopted different shades of green, or different colors altogether. Now, Peninsula’s official colors will be forest green and white. That shade of green has a specific color code in the Adidas system, so all sports teams will match.
With the contract, Peninsula also receives some extra comp money, exclusive apparel not available to the general public, and some throw-in items for big orders.