Last year I contacted most of the major shoe companies (Nike, Asics, Adidas, Reebok, Puma, etc) to see if they’d be interested in sponsoring my company and the HPC Elite team that I coach. I know I’m biased but I think we have a lot to offer (see letter below). Unfortunately, while we had meetings with several of the companies nothing ever came out of them. Undeterred by this rejection, I contacted 2 upstart athletic apparel / shoe companies about 10 days ago in hopes of getting a sponsorship deal for HPC.? Today I was contacted back by one of the companies and it seems they are very interested in working with us. If this works out it will be a MAJOR deal for the company because it allows us to provide more for our athletes and reduces our overhead since we have been paying for some equipment costs for the athletes on our HPC Elite Team. It also legitimizes what I’m trying to do with the company. I won’t disclose the company in question until something is finalized but if it works I think it will be a great match considering that the company is an upstart trying to make a big push in to the market.
Here’s part of the letter I’ve sent to some companies.
I work for a company called Human Performance Consulting. XYZ
gave me your contact information. The reason I’m writing is because I was
wondering if XXXX would be interested in either a sponsorship or
collaboration with my company. We are an athletic development company
that coaches athletes, educates coaches, and performs sport science research.
XYZ actually worked as a researcher for us before joining XXX.
We present an opportunity that I believe would be beneficial for both you and us. We can present you with the opportunity for some high profile exposure,especially within the running and track and field community. We are commissioned to work with USATF as it’s official sport science provider and as part of this we put a crew of 25+ employees on the field for the entire duration of the USATF National Championships and we have no restrictions on what we wear. If you were to be the company’s official sponsor you would have the opportunity to put your logo on our shirts / shoes / shorts as large as you’d like out on the field at what is the second biggest and best (to the Olympics and World Champioships) track meet in the world.
In addition to this, we also have a club of elite level athletes who have been very successful and are increasingly gaining both national and international exposure. Although our track club is only 15 months old, in 2008 we sent 3 athletes to the USATF Indoor national championships, our sprinter turned in the fastest time in the world in the 55m (and world ranked times in the 60m and 200m), and we sent 3 athletes to the USATF Olympic trials (2 made the finals in the Triple Jump), one athlete competed in the UK Olympic trials, and another athlete took second in the triple jump at the Estonian national championships. These athletes could wear your equipment to help increase exposure for your company both in the U.S. and internationally. We actively market these athletes on our youtube and vimeo channels (see http://youtube.com/hpcsport and http://vimeo.com/hpcsport).They would also be willing to participate in product testing if that is
something that would interest you.