UCLA logo popular worldwide
By Jamie Hsiung
Oct. 23, 2002 9:00 p.m.
After seeing UCLA-brand T-shirts and sweatshirts for sale
“all over the place” in their own countries, to many
international students, UCLA may seem like a home away from
home.
Third-year communications studies student Jee-Yeon Kim, who is
an international student from Korea, said the UCLA brand is popular
with Korean students right now.
“The other day someone was looking at a picture of this
famous Korean actor (online) … he was dressed in UCLA
stuff,” Kim said.
Second-year anthropology student Michelle Jhun, who participated
in the Education Abroad Program in Korea affirmed this.
“(Former EAP participants) told me not to buy any UCLA
gear to bring back to Korea because they already have it,”
she said, adding that in Korea there are even television
commercials advertising UCLA clothing.
Kim also said seeing the popularity of UCLA as a brand on
clothing helped strengthen the idea that UCLA is a good school
““ and that in turn influenced her decision to attend
UCLA.
UCLA gives the Associated Students of UCLA the authority to
license the commercial use of the UCLA logo. In turn, ASUCLA
licenses a manufacturer to create UCLA-brand products, and receives
a 5 to 6 percent royalty off the wholesale price of the product
from the manufacturer.
“(In other countries), the UCLA brand is a fashionable
brand like Polo or DKNY,” said Cynthia Holmes, who is the
general manager of trademark and licensing for ASUCLA.
Jhun said when she was getting her hair done in Korea, she was
stunned to see a full-page ad in a teenage magazine of a Korean
star dressed in a UCLA-brand sweatervest.
“I told the (hairdresser) that this was my school,”
Jhun said, “but the lady said it was just a clothes
brand.”
Holmes said the licensing program first began in Japan in 1978,
when the National Collegiate Athletics Association was licensing
university trademarks in Japan.
UCLA, one of the hundreds of licensed NCAA universities,
eventually separated from NCAA to sell UCLA apparel in Japan
because UCLA was the predominant choice there.
Eventually, other countries started generating an interest in
the licensing program in the 1980s.
“Japan seemed to be an area of great interest in U.S.
sports and fashions so it was an obvious place to begin,”
Holmes said.
In 1982, Japanese Air Lines, the national airline of Japan,
devoted a 10-page article and photo display to UCLA in their
monthly travel packages, said John Sandbrook, who is the assistant
provost of the College of Letters and Science.
Japan was so enthralled with the UCLA brand that Suntory Ltd., a
worldwide beverage company in Tokyo, wanted to license the UCLA
name for a sports drink but was denied when the UC Office of the
President prohibited it, Sandbrook said.
But because of a floundering economy, Japan is no longer a
leading seller of UCLA-brand products ““ Korea is the leader,
Holmes said.
Whether or not ASUCLA grants manufacturers the right to license
their products depends on several factors.
The interested country needs to have the proper infrastructure
to produce and distribute the products, have enough wealth so
consumers are interested, and enough university popularity.
Holmes added that counterfeiting is a good measure of
determining popularity.
“When there’s counterfeiting, we know there’s
a market for it,” she said.
Third-year biochemistry student Yvonne Leung, who is also from
Hong Kong, said although she hasn’t seen any UCLA-brand
products being sold in Hong Kong, she has seen Ivy League school
names being “ripped off.”
“I have seen people wearing shirts with designs similar to
university items, but they’re obviously fake, with
misspellings on them,” Leung said, adding that Harvard
University was one of the schools counterfeited.
But in Japan, said Japanese second-year biochemistry student Rei
Asami, UCLA is better known than Ivy League schools like Princeton
or Yale.
“Once my coach in middle school (in Japan) was wearing a
Yale sweatshirt for some reason, and no one knew about it,”
Asami said, “I mean, it’s pretty random, but people
seem to recognize UCLA more.”
Other countries like France have also seen the UCLA-brand
logo.
Eric Gans, acting chair of the Department of French and
Francophone studies, noted that UCLA T-shirts and sweatshirts are
seen selling in clothing stands in various French
neighborhoods.
“Whatever their political views are, they’re very
interested in American pop culture,” Gans said.
