Area stores planned to stay open late Sunday to accommodate people ready to snap up T-shirts, caps and hoodies that proclaimed the Chiefs as the AFC Championship Game winners who headed to Super Bowl LVI.
All that commemorative gear had arrived in Kansas City, but it never will be sold in Kansas, Missouri or anyone else in the United States following the Chiefs’ 27-24 overtime loss to the Bengals on Sunday.
Instead, those items will be going to an organization called Good360. That group said it works with world corporations “to source essential goods and distribute them through our network of diverse nonprofits, supporting people in need.”
One of those corporations is the NFL, which wants to keep the apparel out of sight, said Shari Rudolph, Chief Development Officer/Chief Marketing Officer for Good 360,
“This will be our eighth year working with the NFL in this capacity,” Rudolph said in a phone interview. “So we will get the unusable merchandise from both the AFC and NFC Championship games, as well as from the Super Bowl.
“And we work with our network of nonprofits, the Good360 network of nonprofits, to place those items where they can have the most impact. And of course, they go outside of the United States because of the nature of the donation.”
The NFL doesn’t want to see any fans wearing a hoodie saying the Kansas City Chiefs are playing in Super Bowl LVI.
In Kansas City, stores like Dick’s Sporting Goods and Academy Sports boxed up the items and sent it all to an undisclosed facility in the United States.
“We will gather all of the goods that come in from the different stores, stadiums, etc., and get those ready for shipping overseas,” Rudolph said. “And then we also will wait until we have enough goods to fill a whole container of the right kinds of goods for where they’re going, just to make sure that we’re being responsible in terms of leveraging transportation from a carbon footprint perspective and also from a cost perspective.”
Global supply chain problems, especially with shipping goods, has affected Good360, but the organization does its best to get items in a timely fashion to countries where there is the greatest need.
Rudolph said the Chiefs’ championship items and other NFL goods could go to Africa, Asia, the Middle East or South America.
“In 2021 alone, we distributed over $1.2 billion in goods,” she said. “So what that means for getting these items to where they can have an impact is that that’ll probably happen fairly quickly. We don’t necessarily need to fill a whole container with items from just a single partner (like the NFL).
“We’re more interested in identifying what the needs are where we’re sending things and then making sure we have a mix of products that satisfies that need.”