Newcastle United confirm key St James’ Park date after agreeing £30m multi-year deal.
Newcastle United have confirmed their new club store at St James’ Park will open later this month.
As part of Adidas’ return as the club’s official kit partner – which is worth a reported £30million per season – the previous store, situated at the Gallowgate End, temporarily shut its doors in May to make way for an extensive refurbishment.
In addition, United will also open a new club shop at the Metrocentre, located on the upper level of Town Square, in November with construction work already underway.
Peter Silverstone, Newcastle’s chief commercial officer, announced: “Our ambition is to bring Newcastle United supporters even closer to the club through a best-in-class retail experience.
“Opening a new Metrocentre store is the next step in that journey. It re-introduces the club to an iconic and much-loved shopping destination, and positions our retail offering alongside other leading international brands.
“We have a very exciting period ahead, including the launch of our new flagship store at St. James’ Park, followed quickly by our new store opening in a prime location at Metrocentre.
“We look forward to uniting even more supporters with the Newcastle United products both in the build-up to the Christmas period and into the future.”
To maintain merchandise sales and protect jobs, the Magpies built a temporary store – made up on five modular ‘Rapid Retail’ unit – next to the Strawberry Pub and St James’ Park Metro Station.
As well as manufacturer the club’s kits, the Adidas agreement has allowed Newcastle to move their retail operations in-house for the first time in over a decade.
Speaking to NewcastleWorld earlier this year , Silverstone said: “It’s been a long, long project if I think back to a lot of discussions and deliberations about the next kit partner. Decisions were made there and finalised, and then from finalisation of the decision to reunite with Adidas, we then had a lot of time working out what model we wanted to operate retail.
“There’s lots of different models, and it doesn’t matter about size of club – different clubs operate differently. You can outsource your retail completely to different third parties, even without it being a kit relationship. You can insource some of it and outsource others, you can run the store yourself and run your ecommerce via someone else, or you can bring it all in-house. We’ve decided to bring it all in-house, primarily to be able to build a relationship directly with the fan. This way, the fan can buy directly from the club, and the club can deal with directly with fans who want to buy from the club.
