Cuda will give more colleges a try

Matadors, Cowboys and Lobos soon could debut on sportswear sold online by a Spokane Valley clothing company.

Those university mascots would join Cuda Buffalo Apparel’s traditional lineup of merchandise adorned with more familiar logos, such as Cougars or Bulldogs, as the company looks to foray further into the cyber market for college paraphernalia.

Previously limited to producing licensed products for a handful of regional schools, Cuda Buffalo earlier this month gained approval from Atlanta-based Collegiate Licensing Company to target more colleges throughout the country, said Zane Troester, Cuda Buffalo’s licensing coordinator.

While Internet sales remain a fraction of Cuda Buffalo’s business, Troester pictures taking a larger bite out of a college-goods market, which the CLC estimated at roughly $3.5 billion last year.

“We are going to be, very soon, a major, major player in the worldwide Internet market, and it will be right here in Spokane,” Troester said. New products should start appearing online in about 60 days, he said.

Cuda Buffalo has preliminary agreements pending design approval with an additional 27 of the more than 200 CLC schools, including the University of Nevada and Boise State University. Troester anticipates producing and selling goods for as many as 300 schools, some through other licensing organizations, within a year.

The clothing maker did about $600,000 in Internet sales last year, but projects doing more than $1 million during the next 12 months.

Cuda Buffalo recently closed its North Division Street location and consolidated at its 25,000-square-foot Spokane Valley plant to help focus its efforts online, Troester said. The company sells items ranging from underwear to license plate holders bearing college and corporate designs on its Web site, www.cudaapparel.com.

But Cuda Buffalo faces competition from established online retailers and stores near campuses. Because individual schools hold final license approval, the company also must demonstrate that it can move goods. About half the 50 schools Troester applied to rejected the company outright.

“It’s just a very highly competitive field,” said John DeVilbiss, executive director of public relations and marketing for Utah State University — one of the schools that has “conceptually approved” Cuda Buffalo. “But if you touch on something that’s really unique, it can be extremely profitable because … you have allegiances that you normally don’t get from people.”

DeVilbiss said he receives several requests monthly similar to Cuda Buffalo’s, and the school approves more than it denies. The university does frown upon items such as shot glasses and lingerie, he said.

Troester plans to woo Greeks and campus leaders and try to keep Cuda Buffalo’s Web site among the top listings on Internet search engines. The site logs more than 1.2 million hits a month, he said.

With about 50 employees, Cuda Buffalo has yearly revenues of about $5 million. In Spokane, Craven’s Coffee Co. and vintage-style athletic T-shirt company Maxgraphix also are CLC-licensed.

“This gives (Cuda Buffalo) a lot more leverage to reach out to more universities,” said CLC spokesman Derek Hughes. “The sky’s the limit.”