The Only Italians Looking Forward to the World Cup
Publishing house Panini must contend with a surge in sales when the tourney rolls around every four years.
A creative team at Panini discusses new products.
Source: Panini
Fabrizio Melegari admits he’s one of the few people in Italy looking forward to the World Cup. Sure, along with the rest of the country, he was heartbroken when the Azzurri—the national soccer team—lost its chance to participate in this summer’s tournament after a 0-0 tie with Sweden on Nov. 13. “The fan inside each of us got hit hard,” says Melegari, editorial director at Panini SpA, the maker of baseball-card-like World Cup stickers collected by the soccer-besotted worldwide. “But from a commercial standpoint, it’s not hitting our business at all.”
The company’s sales surge every time the World Cup rolls around as kids (and often the former kids known as parents) buy hundreds of stickers to paste into albums. The 80-page booklet is free, but the stickers cost about $1 for a packet of five. Schoolyards in Europe and Latin America become de facto trading floors for Panini stickers where kids swap duplicates for players they need to complete their album. Anyone lucky enough to get no duplicates (read: nobody) would spend almost $150 to get the 681 stickers, but most will pay more than $300 even after swapping with friends. “It’s an expensive business,” says Luca Masse, 50, a surveyor who says he’s managed to put together a full set for the past half-dozen World Cups. “If you buy a few packets at a time, you’ll never finish the album.”