On Jan. 7, Bethel, CT-based licensed sports apparel cataloger Star Struck acquired the sports assets of defunct ProTeam from Stamford, CT-based GE Capital. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Formerly known as Genesis Direct, ProTeam consisted of specialty sports catalogs such as Manny’s Baseball Land, Hot Off the Ice, From the Sidelines, Nothin’ but Hoops, Soccer Madness, and Redline. At one point, ProTeam had owned high-tech gifts cataloger The Edge Co and low-end gifts title Carol Wright. Among others. According to Jason Scheets, Star Struck’s chief operating officer, ProTeam’s sports titles had not mailed in more than a year.
Rather than relaunch the catalogs, Star Struck will fold select merchandise from the ProTeam books into its own catalog. The first edition to feature the items will most likely be the spring book, which will drop in March and April. Along with ProTeam’s merchandise and multimillion-name customer list, Star Struck also acquires ProTeam’s URLs.
“We plan to grow at a steady pace,” says Scheets. “We’ll probably stay with the million-catalog mailing range to be our most profitable.” The six-year-old Star Struck will change the name of its catalog slightly to reflect the transaction, to Star Struck/ProTeam, which will be 80% owned subsidiary of Star Struck.