Food & Drink
New Seattle Company Wants to Rent You Seahawks Jerseys
Rep the Squad is a new Seattle-based subscription service for NFL fans.
By Michael Rietmulder August 30, 2017
Being an NFL fan can be expensive. Never mind the steep ticket prices and $13 stadium beers. Even that jersey of your favorite player that has you feeling like the lord of Buffalo Wild Wings each Sunday costs serious coin. Furthermore, it might be obsolete in a month when that player gets hurt or traded.
A Seattle entrepreneur thinks he’s found a solution that will conveniently make him money. Brian Watkins has launched Rep the Squad, a subscription service that rents jerseys for a monthly fee. Taking an early-days Netflix approach to “man cave” attire, fans select a jersey from Rep the Squad’s website and the company ships it to your door. After returning it in a prepaid envelope, the company will send out the next jersey in your queue.
As a bonus, there’s no need to wash the Dorito stains out before returning them. Rep the Squad will dry clean dirty jerseys at no additional charge, which oughta put your mind at ease during repeated trips to the nacho bar.
The subscription runs $20 per month for adults and $17 for kids, and seems to target casual fans and kiddos who might quickly outgrow expensive jerseys. In an interview with ESPN, Watkins also makes his pitch to fantasy football nerds who might want to “rep their squad” one week and a player on their fantasy team the next. NFL jerseys often run well north of $100, making a closet full of jerseys a spendy proposition.
While the company has backing from Madrona Venture Group and Maveron (co-founded by Starbucks bigshot Howard Schultz), it counts Edgar Martinez and Seahawks receiver Doug Baldwin among its investors, Geekwire reports. Richard Sherman is serving as a brand ambassador.
Rep the Squad hopes to expand to all pro sports teams eventually, but for now it only carries jerseys of Seahawks, Detroit Lions and San Francisco 49ers players.
Even if you’re not a football fan, it might come in handy if you want to board a flight early at Sea-Tac.