Icons Press Release: July 2, 2012

UK Football Fans Fall In Love With Leo Messi

Signed Leo Messi products from Icons.com outselling the rest by 4 to 1

FORMER Manchester United Merchandising Director, Edward Freedman, says sales figures for Icons.com’s Leo Messi signed memorabilia prove the Argentinian maestro is now the UK’s best-loved player.

Freedman chairs Icons.com - the most trusted football memorabilia supplier in the game, providing sought-after signed shirts, photos and other products to fans and gift buyers throughout the world.

The former Managing Director of Tottenham Hotspur, hailed by The Economist as “football’s merchandising guru”, says Messi memorabilia now outsells Ronaldo, the next best selling player, by a factor of 4 to 1 and leaves Rooney and Gerrard trailing in his wake.

The Icons Chairman said:

“UK football fans love Spanish football and Messi in particular. He’s the neutral’s favourite with most football lovers now agreeing he is the best in the world, if not the best ever. The UK public has fallen in love with him.”

“Everyone wants to be close to greatness and by owning a signed Messi shirt then you’ve got the world’s very best. When Icons.com says ‘signed by the world’s best’, we mean it.”

Icons also sell its memorabilia in Harrods where the Argentinian legend outsells otherplayers by 5 to 1. Icons.com now sell his shirts to 78 countries around the world.

The company stocks ten Messi products including a signed and framed Barcelona 2011/12 home shirt; a dual signed Barcelona 2011/12 home shirt with Andrés Iniesta; a signed Adidas boot and a selection of signed iconic photographs of the great man in action.

Messi’s range of signed memorabilia outsold Icons range of other products - signed by the likes of Kaka, Robin Van Persie, Luis Saurez, Andres Iniesta and even Diego Maradona - by the bucket load between April 2011 and April 2012.

Freedman added:

“Does this mean UK football fans are getting less tribal and more sophisticated? That remains to be seen. But it does show how strong the Barcelona and Messi brands have become. They are setting new standards for the game and, in turn, reinventing the football memorabilia market.”

You can view and buy Icons’ range of signed products at www.icons.com.

For more information on this product, or Icons.com, or for interviews with Edward Freedman, please contact Ben Lee on blee@hardhat.co.uk or 07961 820 579.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

1. Sales figures through Icons.com from April 2011 and April 2012:

Player - Team / Nation = Units sold

Leo Messi - Barcelona, Argentina = 2021

Cristiano Ronald - Real Madrid, Portugal = 496

Robin Van Persie - Arsenal, Holland = 481

Kaka - AC Milan, Brazil = 477

Luis Suarez - Liverpool, Uruguay = 409

Andrés Iniesta - Barcelona, Spain = 386

Steven Gerrard - Liverpool, England = 365

Wayne Rooney - Man Utd, England = 274

Diego Maradona - Argentina = 261

Fernando Torres - Chelsea, Spain = 254

2. Icons has been in business since 1999. Icons is one of the oldest memorabilia operators in the country, if not the world.
3. Edward Freedman has over 40 years experience in the retail industry and in the late 80s was Managing Director of Tottenham Hotspur. He then moved to Manchester United and became Managing Director ofManchester United Merchandising from 1992 onwards. Over the next six years he transformed the commercial side of the club's operation and built Manchester United into the biggest brand in world football. He was also a key player in the formation of the Premier League and was hailed by The Economist as "football's merchandising guru".
4. Icons.com are an international brand and supply to well over 70 countries each year and haverepresentatives in North America and regularly supply customers in Japan, Australia and the Middle East.
5. Icons.com employs the highest standards in the signed football merchandise industry to assure customers of the authenticity of its products. At each event, photographs document each signature and Icons creates a Certificate of Authenticity (COA) for each item including the date and venue and a picture of the product and the signing image. Each product carries a uniquely coded Icons hologram whose identical twin is added to the COA which is signed by the Icons Managing Director.
6. Icons were awarded the world's first ever signed football memorabilia license by FIFA in 2010. This summer Icons has been awarded the first ever official license for the UEFA Champions League.
7. Icons have partnered with Sky Sports’ Revista De La Liga programme for years now. They are also now the official partner of the Abu Dhabi Media Company who own the rights to the Premier League throughout the Middle East.
8. Icons also run regular promotions with the likes of Sky Sports, The Blizzard, 442 and GuillemBalague.com.
9. A Spanish version of the Icons website is available for Spanish fans.
ENDS

Check out the new Icons home page on Google +. This will allow lots of customersa and friends of Icons from around the world to interact with us more directly. Join today and add us to your circle.

Follow Icons on Twitter too @icons_football

Icons have been conducting exclusive signing sessions with Leo Messi since 2006. The season before Leo had made his debut for Barcelona and at the end of the 05/06 season he was part of the Champions League winning Barcelona squad, but didn't actually play in the Final against Arsenal. Here's a photo from our first signing with Leo, as you can see we've improved our photography skills over the years!

Icons have now done five signings with Leo and seen his meteoric rise to become widely acknowledged as the best player in the world. Here are some of the signing photos from the various sessions we've had with him.

Barcelona April 2008

Barcelona April 2009

Barcelona September 2009

Leo was a little busy in 2010 playing in the World Cup and scoring 47 goals for Barcelona so we were delighted to meet up with him again in May 2011. Amazingly Leo was able to fit a signing session in with Icons in the week leading up to the Champions League Final at Wembley. Despite the chaos caused by the ash cloud we pulled off the signing with the world's number one player, just before he reminded everyone of his talents in the final.

Such is the popularity of Leo we sold out of his signed Barcelona shirts in 17 days. Another record broken by Leo. This is on the back of winning his third Champions League, his fifth La Liga title and becoming the first man to top score in the three consecutive Champions League seasons.

At the end of the 2011 season he had scored 53 goals in only 55 games and seems destined to be crowned World Player of the Year for the third time this December. What a player and what an icon.

Sign up to the icons newsletter to be the first to hear of future signings with Leo. He only signs for us and we know he values the faith Icons had in his talents back in 2006. Long may this successful relationship continue.

Icons has had a long-standing relationship with the good people at FourFourTwo, in the old days we used to supply them with editorial content now we're supply them with fantastic signed football memorabilia.

This month they're doing a feature on the contenders for the Champions League places - Man United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Man City and Spurs so we're giving away prizes of signed stuff from great player, past and present of these clubs. Check out the competition here and go and buy your copy of FourFourTwo today.

Doh! Forgotten to get your loved one anything for Valentine's Day? In a cold-sweat and need a quick solution?

Well help is at hand. Icons have teamed up with Arenaflowers.comthe blooming best online flower store in the world, to offer 10% off their lovely bouquets, bunches and balloons to all panic-striken football fans out there. The clock is ticking and it needs to get there by Monday so go, go go, get your discount here if you ever want her to get you that signed football memorabilia present you've always wanted but were afraid to ask for.

Icons deal with the world's best sportsmen to bring our customers the best signed memorabilia in the world. However, our market-leading products are also fantastic for retailers, media brands and other corporations for a wide number of reasons.

 

 

We deal with some of the biggest brands in the world such as FIFA, Land Rover, IMG, Deloitte, ESPN, Sky Sports and many more.

 

 

They use our products for a wide variety of reasons such as

* promotions

* competition prizes

* event marketing

* charity auctions

* corporate gifts

* sales incentives

 

Icons products are also sold in Harrods, London and Saks Fifth Avenue, Riyadh. If you a retailer anywhere in the world who would want to stock our products give us a call on +44 20 7267 3934  

 

If you are interested in joining the big names below and working with the icons corporate team then please call or email us at corporate@icons.com

 

More people from America bought tickets to this World Cup than any other country and it seems the game has taken off in the US over the past month. We've been providing a fantastic range of prizes to Fox Soccer Channel, who have been broadcasting a post-game show across the US throughout the tournament.

The vuvuzela is probably the biggest talking point of the World Cup so far. Love it or loathe it, it's certainly making itself heard. However, outside our hotel is quite literally the biggest, and loudest, vuvuzela in the world.

It's about 40 feet high and 200 feet long, perched on a bizarre discontinued flyover and brought to us by our corporate sponsor friends at Hyundai. Every time a goal is scored it goes off and it sounds like a containter ship announcing it's docking into your hotel room. As we type that means 53 times. And you thought the noise on TV was annoying. Still Hyundai have got a blog entry mention out of it so I suppose they're happy. We're hoping there are no more goals in the whole tournament and every knock out game is settled on penalties.

We're proud to launch the brand new 2009-10 icons.com brochure. The aim is to showcase all the major players we have signed memorabilia products for and to re-emphaize that icons.com is the leading suppliers of signed football merchandise in the world.

Check out the full brochure here

Cover

Torres page

Kaka page

Signings page

If you would us to send you one in the post or a low-res version by email let us know at icons.com

Today we've launched icons.com on Flickr, the global photo-sharing website. Icons.com on Flickr

First to go up were our photos from most recent signing session with Lionel Messi. And while we were at it we've also uploaded the photos from the last two signings we've done over the past 18 months with the Barcelona legend.

In total we've done four signings with Leo, but we can't currently locate the pics of the first session we did with him back in May 2006 when he was only 18. Bare with us, we're trying to find them and we'll upload them as soon as we work out where we've put them!

From now on we're going to upload the images from our signings sessions so you can see behind the scenes of what goes on when we meet the players. We have to take lots of photos in order to create our Certificates of Authenticity so we there should be a decent collection once we get them up.

We're also going to go back into our archive and bring out the photos from signing sessions we've done with legendary players who we currently don't sell products for on the site. We've conducted signings sessions in the past with the likes of the Brazilian Ronaldo, Luis Figo, Roberto Carlos and Xavi Alonso but as we have sold out of their stuff we don't have them on the current site.

Unfortunately due to some people ripping off our signing photos and product images we've had to add an icons.com watermark to all the photos we upload off our site. Hopefully it doesn't get in the way too much, we just want to protect our images from turning up in unexpected places.