It’s funny what one win can do. Since the defeat over Arkansas, ULM students and fans have shown their support like never before. Along with this new wave of support for the football team comes a demand for more and more ULM apparel.
After the Arkansas game, the ULM Bookstore ordered t-shirts commemorating the “Shock in Little Rock.” The shirts arrived in the bookstore the following Monday after the game, and the first shipment of 150 t-shirts were sold out before 10 a.m. and another shipment of 200 shirts were sold out by the end of the day. The bookstore sold out of 400 shirts the next day, and another shipment of 600 that Wednesday and has sold over 4,000 “Shock in Little Rock” t-shirts to date.
“Typically this time of year we’re getting maybe five online orders per day; usually probably about three or four of those would be textbooks and the rest would be t-shirts,” said Rebecca Boothby, general manager at the ULM bookstore. “We started getting a couple hundred online orders for t-shirts and other merchandise, like license plate covers, alumni shirts, other shirts, baseball caps, coffee mugs; anything that says ULM.”
The sales on average at the bookstore are up over 300 percent compared to a year ago, according to Boothby.
Kyle Acklin, a freshman kinesiology major, was one of the many ULM students caught up in the t-shirt buying craze after the Arkansas game. Acklin said that he would have probably not bought more ULM apparel had the football team not beaten Arkansas.
“The football team is doing well, and so because the football team is doing well, more people want to wear their ULM stuff and support the school and everyone in the community will know they go to ULM,” said Acklin.
The apparel sales are not limited to just Monroe and the surrounding areas. In the past two weeks, the bookstore has shipped apparel all over the country, and even to military personnel and alumni living overseas. Boothby attribute the large amounts of apparel sales to the win over Arkansas and the amount of national attention that ULM has received in the weeks after the game.
