As Baltimore's hometown hero, Cal Ripken Jr., prepares for his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame at the end of this month, the interest in Ripken memorabilia has reached a level not witnessed since the "Iron Man" broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive-game streak. 

PressBox publisher Stan "The Fan" Charles recently sat down with Ray Schulte, the man who helped Ripken start Ironclad Authentics, to talk about the dynamics pushing Cal's memorabilia -- and all sports collectibles -- to higher levels. 

Below is the second of a three-part interview. (Click here to read Part I.)
 

Ironclad Authentics is offering numerous Cal Ripken collectibles as fans prepare for his induction into the Hall of Fame.

SC: Does Cal equally like all of these initiatives and businesses under his Ripken Baseball umbrella? 
RS: Oh, absolutely. Cal is a visionary. He loves to create. He has got multiple objectives. One is obviously like we mentioned before: the youth movement, the youth initiative. He is involved with the Babe Ruth League. He is involved with his camps and clinics. And he loves the professional side, too. We now have two minor league teams, one in Aberdeen and one in Augusta. 

The endorsements are a means to an end. Basically, when he does the endorsements, the money comes into Ripken Baseball, and it kind of enables us to continue doing what we do. And with Ironclad … he does get approached quite a bit [by] people with odd things to sign and unique things. And he loves that … We are a young company coming into an established category. So it kind of forced us to look at the creative side. 

We have created a lot of unique items that you normally wouldn’t find in your traditional memorabilia company, and Cal loves that. He continually will sit down with us and think of ideas, and [this year] we came up with a Hall of Fame ball, which [is] the first time a regular Rawlings Major League baseball has the Hall of Fame logo on it. That was Cal’s idea. It came from a conversation we had with Cal. And from that conversation he took it a step further, so now we have a special ball that has a Hall of Fame logo, and we also have his two other logos on either side: his No. 8 logo and the retirement logo. So that was basically all Cal, and his creative mind, it takes off. 

SC: From a marketing standpoint, how long ago did you start planning for Cal's induction into the Hall of Fame?  
RS: We didn’t want to come across as being pretentious, and that’s not Cal’s attitude or mentality, but at the same time, as a marketing person I had to take the initiative to plan for if he got in or if he didn’t get in. Now you can look at it and make your decision in terms of the odds. I had to plan as if he was getting into the Hall of Fame, and we did that a year out [of the vote]. 

Again, a lot of our planning with the Hall of Fame as it pertains to Cal was connected to the growth of Ironclad, so we were trying to do two things at the same time: grow Ironclad and also plan for Cal’s potential induction. And one of the things we wanted to do, was that we could kick it off right after the Jan. 9 announcement. Not many former players have had that opportunity to kick it off right after the Jan. 9 [announcement]. It was a very tough situation because at one point you couldn’t come out and say, 'We know that Cal is getting in,' and at the same time the Hall of Fame was not very excited about providing their marks out to potential licensees, because our initial thing was planned for a QVC show Jan. 10. 

So if you think about it, we had had all of our conversations and discussions with all of our licensees and Major League Baseball prior to that, and have everything ready to ship on the 10th.  

SC: So when Cal didn’t want to be presumptuous, as marketing people you had to make assumptions to a certain extent?
RS: Exactly. And it was exciting, too because we were doing something that in my 20 years, I had never seen happen before, and [that] was to pre-plan. Normally, Hall of Fame collectibles and excitement gets going around the end of June, beginning of July … and here we are creating something right after Jan. 9. It was a time leading up to that where people weren’t thinking about [the induction]. But we had to plan it.  

SC: Tell me a little bit about the preparations for the Hall of Fame. You rolled things out on QVC in January. Has it been go-go-go, or have there been some lulls?
RS: No, it has been active every day, which I expected, but I didn’t expect it to take the level that it has. The response from corporate sponsors, the response from partners such as Bank of America, and our participation on mlb.com; it’s been above my expectations. Right now, we surpassed our gross dollars that we did last year, so in many respects, we are in a very positive place right now going into what I would consider should be our biggest and largest month. 

SC: Can you share a little bit about what is going to go on this month? I would imagine there is going be a tremendous amount of retail opportunities for fans up in Cooperstown, but this is his hometown, too. Are there going to be a lot of opportunities locally?
RS: Sure, we have actually already started that. Harford County had a Cal Ripken day the other day. It was a parade, and there will be other functions just like that. The Orioles will have a send-off. We have another QVC show on July 23, which will be held up at the Aberdeen Complex. But it is exciting because, again, when we look at a potential opportunity or project, we are looking at not just the revenue we can generate or the branding that Ironclad can generate, but also for the entire company.

SC: Now Cal signed a tremendous amount during his career. Did it lessen the demand for Hall of Fame memorabilia?
RS: No, we’ve had these conversations many times, and it’s funny because Cal understands the value of a signature that we sell. But at the same time, he’ll come back to me and say, 'Ray, I understand we are trying to create a business, but my feeling is that for every signature I give out there in the ballpark, every signature I give there to somebody outside, we are bringing somebody into our collectible community and somebody who may want to take that, get excited and take that to another level.' 

So, unlike other guys who may have an exclusive deal or think about dollars first, Cal’s not like that. 

Issue 2.29: July 19, 2007