On Friday morning, at 11:40 sharp, hundreds of Mets fans flooded into the team’s new store at Citi Field in Queens. It was opening day of the baseball season, and they were the first to enter the new space, located in the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, the grand entrance to the ballpark.
Susan Wiedeman, 65, of Riverdale, NJ, who has attended Mets opening day with her husband for the past 40 years, was giddy with the experience. “We were almost the first ones in,” he said. “It was very nice”.
At 10,000 square feet, the store is twice the size of the previous iteration and filled with new technology, art and merchandise. There are much higher ceilings — “Last year I could adjust a light bulb myself if I had to,” said James Benesh, the executive director of consumer products for the Mets — and a hanging sculpture by Michael Murphy, a Brooklyn artist. The orange sculpture has the Mets logo woven into different cityscapes.
Part of the appeal of the new store is the sheer size of its inventory. “There’s a lot of stuff in here,” said Janet Conlon, 75, who lives in Hillsborough, NJ, and is a school bus driver. He already has a closet full of Mets gear at home, including more than 40 baseball caps. On opening day, he wore three layers of Mets gear — “I don’t like being cold,” he said — and brought a designer bag and blanket. However, the store offered plenty of new options.
“I haven’t seen many things like this before,” he said with a laugh. “It’s amazing.”
Where 12 T-shirts were on display, today there are 52, according to Mr. Benesh. There are also more than 3,000 baseballs on the shelves at any given time. And the store has 40 staff, double what was previously needed.
But the Mets organization has also upped its game in terms of what it sells, especially to female fans.
“We’ve been getting feedback for a few years now that female fans don’t necessarily want the men’s shirt to be pink,” Mr Benesh said.
The team is limited to selling items from authorized MLB vendors and has tapped some of the licensed newcomers to make capsule collections sold exclusively at Citi Field. For example, instead of outsourcing the purchase of vintage sportswear to Etsy or vintage stores, the Mets source these items in-house. Refried Apparel, a company that makes new clothing out of salvageable old items, has a line of denim jackets with vintage Mets logos and numbers sold in the team store.
“There’s a lot of waste in our industry,” said Joanna Mingo, who is the consumer products coordinator for the Mets. “We have players who are traded and then we can’t sell their shirt. Now we can send them to this beautiful company and they make something that looks like something you’d find on Etsy made by a girl in her college dorm.”
Other smaller brands offer striking jackets, corduroy hats, sequined tops and satin windbreakers. Personalized jerseys and limited edition merchandise are also sold, but exclusively to VIP ticket holders.
“These are things I can wear on a walk or to brunch, not just to the games,” said Hannah O’Neill, 26, a nurse from Rockville Centre, New York, who was shopping the collection on opening day. . “Two years ago, you couldn’t get any of these things.” She had her eye on a hat covered in flowers.
Others were genuinely mesmerized by the new RFID self-checkout system. Shoppers drop their purchases into a bucket and a computer reads an RFID price tag attached to the item. Items appear on a screen and shoppers tap their cards to pay. “There is no scanning,” Mr. Benesh said. “It goes a lot faster.”
Still, there were some growing pains. Some shoppers called store associates to help them navigate the system.
“I’ve heard a lot of people on the line complain about it, but I’m young and I love self-control,” said Dani Wasserman, 27, who is studying for a master’s degree in film in Boulder, Colo., and whose dad grew up in Long Island. They bought a Francisco Alvarez jersey.
It was just the first day of a big shopping season for Mets fans, as Mr. Benesh reminded store staff in a meeting just before the gates opened. “If you hear feedback, bring it to us,” he said. “We still have 79 games left for today.”
