This week’s Tokyo Series turned out to be a success for apparel maker Fanatics.
The company announced Thursday that the two-game series between the Cubs and Dodgers in Japan generated $40 million of fan gear and trading cards sales. Fanatics said it was the best-selling special event in company history.
The company’s sales included Tokyo Series fan gear and trading cards across e-commerce and wholesale; the Fanatics-operated MLB Official Shop retail locations across Tokyo; the MLB Flagship Shop in New York; the limited-edition Takashi Murakami collection — which included Complex and Fanatics pop-up stores in Los Angeles and Tokyo; and Topps collector activations in Tokyo.
“Japanese people will buy anything that’s in a limited edition and hard to get, and they’ll resell it,” said Lillian Izawa, a Japanese American from Honolulu and a flight attendant with Hawaiian Airlines. She was one of the thousands of fans who waited in line to get into the official MLB shop in Tokyo.
Ruby Yu and Nick Mah, two Canadians with roots in Hong Kong, traveled from Vancouver to Japan on vacation.
“Things are flying off the shelf,” said Ruby as Nick stood alongside with a bag full of goodies.
Wearing a blue Chicago jersey, Cubs fan Jason Umbreit was spending modestly in the souvenir shop, happy to have found a corner with Chicago merchandise.
“I knew it was going to be crowded, and this is the biggest shop I’ve ever seen,” he said.