BIHUB invests in Drelife to create, with BLM, the first official second-life channel for FC Barcelona merchandising
The t-shirts of the FC Barcelona For tens of millions of followers round the world, they’re much greater than merchandising: they’re the materials assist of a collective reminiscence constructed over generations. To date, the resale of those items occurred by way of casual, fragmented channels outdoors the Club, with none assure of authenticity and with out the worth generated reverting to the entity that created them.
He Barça Innovation Hub (BIHUB), Barça Licensing & Merchandising (BLM) and Drelife They have joined forces to rework this actuality and place FC Barcelona at the forefront of a quickly rising market phase that, till now, operated utterly outdoors the golf equipment.
The BIHUB funding: strategic enhance to innovation in sports activities retail
To materialize this initiative, BIHUB has formalized its entry as an funding associate of Drelife, a Barcelona start-up specialised in round economic system options for the retail sector. The funding responds to BIHUB’s technique of figuring out and accelerating expertise firms with the capability to rework the sports activities business, offering not solely capital however entry to the FC Barcelona ecosystem, specialised sector information and implementation capability on a worldwide scale.
With this operation, Drelife turns into the fifteenth start-up in the BIHUB portfolio, alongside with Visualfy, OLIVER, Onalabs, CeleBreak, Made of Genes, Fyxbody, Rimbarlat, Genomcore, Omniscope, Riterz, Metrica Sports, Admefy, AdSpective and a reference funding in the sports activities and expertise discipline.
BLM: the operator of the Club’s official digital channel
BLM is the firm accountable for the complete operation of FC Barcelona’s e-commerce. Your participation in this venture is decisive: it’s BLM who ensures that the second life channel isn’t an exterior platform however a pure extension of the official retailer, with all the high quality, authenticity and repair controls that this suggests.
The involvement of BLM additionally ensures that the information generated by this new channel – gathering habits, demand by kind of blouse, consumer profiles – will profit the Club as a high-quality strategic asset, with a direct impression on business and loyalty decision-making.
A rising market phase that the Club begins to lead
The world second-life market for sports activities merchandise is registering sustained double-digit progress and strikes billions of euros yearly. To date, nevertheless, it operated utterly outdoors of sports activities golf equipment: with out verification, with out assure of authenticity and with out the financial worth generated reverting to the originating entities. With this venture, FC Barcelona is positioned as one among the first golf equipment in the world to get better that worth, set up a channel of recurring revenue from the current property and generate first-rate information about the gathering habits of its followers.
Àngel Riudalbas, FC Barcelona supervisor accountable for BIHUB and BLM Advisor:
“At BIHUB we wanted to go one step further with Drelife. We will promote a pioneering initiative in the sports industry that will allow us to open new business avenues for the Club. This collaboration will give us the opportunity to convert our retail ecosystem into a more efficient and profitable model, generating recurring income from existing products and at the same time reinforcing the bond with our fans.”
Beto Miralles, founder and CEO of Drelife:
“For Drelife, this collaboration with FC Barcelona represents much more than a strategic agreement: it is the opportunity to build a pioneering model that can redefine the relationship between clubs and their retail assets. In my case, it also has a particularly personal component after having been part of the Club for ten years as a handball player.”
About Drelife
Drelife is the technological platform that permits any model to activate its personal second life channel instantly and scalable. Its complete infrastructure manages the whole product cycle, remodeling sustainability right into a worthwhile enterprise mannequin. For firms, it offers whole management and strategic information that multiply the worth of their shoppers; For the market, it represents a flexible resolution with the capability to rework sectors comparable to sports activities, changing technical merchandising into property for verified round consumption.
About BLM
In June 2018, FC Barcelona created BLM (Barça Licensing & Merchandising) to instantly assume the administration and direct management of the model and the exploitation of its merchandising rights, with the purpose of continuous its world growth and advancing its enterprise growth plan. retail.
Currently, FC Barcelona has 15 Barça Stores managed 100% by the Club, eight of which have been inaugurated throughout the 2022/23 season. Among them, the Canaletas retailer stands out, which is the flagship institution and the second largest in phrases of floor space, solely behind the Spotify Camp Nou retailer. In addition, it additionally has eight Barça Stores on a franchise foundation.
