By David Owen
October 23 – In their World Cup play-off next month, or even if they make it all the way to Brazil for their first appearance in the finals proper, the footballers of Iceland may find that they have an unexpected pocket of support around the cheese and prosciutto town of Parma in northern Italy.
This is the base of Erreà, the kit manufacturer that has supplied Iceland since 2004, and has hence been handed a nice boost in exposure – and sales – by the Nordic nation’s impressive recent run of results.
As Fabrizio Taddei, the company’s export manager, explained over the phone from the Middle East, where he found himself this week, the Icelanders’ exploits have so far lifted demand for their replica shirts by very roughly 20-30 per cent – the shirts are “flying”, he told me.
If Gylfi Sigurdsson and team-mates were to spring another surprise by beating Croatia, their play-off opponents, Taddei thinks demand would “explode” by about 100 per cent – though, as he was quick to point out, there are limits when you are talking about a country with a population of fewer than 350,000 people.
“Obviously, when you supply a team, you always hope for them to do as well as possible,” Taddei said. “So you always have the hope.
“I am very pleased the hope has become a sort of reality. I’m really looking forward to the play-off games.”
I wondered whether a relatively small company such as Erreà – which employs some 600 people and has annual turnover upwards of €50 million – was able to meet demand spikes, such as the one for Iceland shirts it is currently experiencing, given the unpredictability of football which makes it so hard to forecast when they might materialise.
Taddei explained that the way the company is set up, with manufacturing capacity near to hand in Europe, helps it to react fast to such situations.
“We are able to meet the demand because we are one of very few manufacturers left in Europe,” he said. “We have our own manufacturing facilities and stitching unit. So we are very quick in replying to extra demand.”
The replica shirts that the citizens of Reykjavik and Akureyri will be sporting so proudly next month will have been made in Parma.
Though it inhabits a land of giants – Adidas, Nike, Puma – Erreà has a decent sprinkling of club teams who wear its kit, including Norwich City of the English Premier League, Nantes of Ligue 1 in France, Rayo Vallecano of Spain’s La Liga and, of course, Parma of Serie A.
In the international game, however, the company has not yet got a World Cup qualifier. So as far as Brazil 2014 is concerned, Erreà is “pinning our hopes on Iceland”.