An industry that’s growing just as fast as esports itself is merchandising. Just like traditional sports everyone wants to grab a jersey of their favorite player or team. The demand is obvious as the community grows day by day, and the supply is slowly but surely catching up. Meta Threads is one of those companies that is truly on the forefront of esports merchandise, despite being in business for only about two years.
As one of the main exhibitors on the floor at DreamHack: Atlanta last weekend, Meta Threads had a line to their booth every day of fans eager to snag a jersey of the very teams and players they were watching that weekend. Lead Designer, David Siqueiros took a break to talk to us a little about their experience within esports merchandising and how it has yet to stop growing.
Esports Insider: You originally started from creating paintball jerseys to now in esports, how did that transition come about?
David Siqueiros: Our parent company is HK Army which is a paintball company and we’ve actually been in business for almost 10 years now. I’ve been working with HK army for about seven years doing custom jerseys then about two years ago we started doing esports stuff. I have a passion for video games myself and a lot of our target demographic are the same in paintball as they are in esports so with that it was just an easy conversion for us. The designs and products are the same kind of style, and the same kind of players we were marketing to. We started with one team, Team Secret, and now we service over 100.
“When we got here it was a little boring, it was a little dull and we want to get away from the mainstream sport designs.”
With esports the whole scene is very exciting, especially with us because we’re trying to bring our different style to the esports brand. When we got here it was a little boring, it was a little dull and we want to get away from the mainstream sport designs.
Esports Insider: How do you think esports merchandise has been able to differentiate themselves from other branding or designs?
David: With esports merchandise we’ve been able to see a lot of new companies come up and have their own take on things. Astro Gaming is one of our great friends in the industry and they have a product that’s different than other headset companies. They’ve brought their own style and that’s something that’s respectful; it’s cool and it’s different. I think a lot of companies are starting to do that as well, they’re starting to differentiate themselves, not just from other companies but from other industries.
Put your mark on a new ASTRO Jersey by @meta_threads, here at #DHATL17 pic.twitter.com/TDsiSnsRUm
— ASTRO Gaming (@ASTROGaming) July 22, 2017
Esports Insider: All of your products are made in America, why is that so important to the company?
David: We’re very proud of our product, we’re sticklers for quality. Our offices are in Los Angeles and we actually do our printing, cutting, sewing, pressing all there at our facility. That allows us to have really crazy turn around times so we can support our teams quicker than anyone else. Esports is such a global presence it’s great to see our company getting to represent the United States by making our products here.
Esports Insider: When you guys started getting into esports two years ago did you ever think it would get to this level?
David: I’ve actually traveled to an event once a month this year so far. It’s been pretty crazy, we were pretty unsure when we got into this space. When we started we only had one team and weren’t sure it would convert to anything and, thankfully, it did. We’ve started picking up more teams, changed how the company runs, we’re now opening up a casual line and expanding into a lot of other products.
I think the goal in the future is to just keep expand into different products. There’s definitely room in the industry to grow.