School merchandise is the best way to show off your school spirit while also supporting your school and all the things they do. Though WJ has no problem selling merchandise, the options that we have to choose from leave much to be desired.
Let’s start with the WJ car magnet. WJ has no problem selling these out, as they’re seen on many cars throughout the cluster. They look fine, but they’re really basic and have so much more potential. It just looks like someone opened Canva, put in a circle and wrote “WJ” in the most basic text they could find; they don’t even have our logo on it. With the number of magnets sold, the Booster Club clearly has no reason to change the design; they should revisit the design and give it a fresh look.
Another big issue is the options students have to choose from. Most of the options consist of sweatshirts, shirts and pajama pants. The school also offers some more seasonal clothing such as beanies for the winter, but there isn’t much besides that. Looking at B-CC’s store’s website, they sell products such as a Spirit Bundle which includes a phone wallet, stickers, and a lanyard. Churchill’s store not only sells clothing, but they also sell school supplies for students.
The biggest issue with the school merchandise designs. Compared to some sport-specific merch, the school-focused designs have a long way to go. First off, the quality just feels off. It feels really cheap. I get that it won’t be top-of-the-line quality, but it could have a step up. The designs also just seem basic. The hoodie, sweatshirt and t-shirt options mostly consist of a design saying “Walter Johnson High School” in basic font and a small wildcat logo. Although this does the job for some and they’d be more than happy to wear it, there should be more variety and unique options for us to buy.
Having nice merch designs isn’t impossible as evidenced by some sport-specific merch such as baseball and football. The cursive “WJ” hat for baseball is, in my opinion, the nicest merch item our school has.
Looking once again at B-CC’s merchandise, some of their designs are miles ahead of what WJ has to offer. Their “The Guck” t-shirt has a really cool and unique design while their pajama pants consist of multiple designs including a blue and yellow Maryland flag, their slogans, the year they were established and a lot more. Walter Johnson’s pajama options, meantime, are the same checkered square design. Again, they’re nice but we need more options.
The biggest solution to this issue is to give students more opportunities to design their own merchandise to be sold at school. A design contest could bring new ideas to the table for the booster club to consider while also allowing different backgrounds, perspectives and personalities to be shown in our school merch.
The school needs to create merchandise that makes students proud to wear it outside of football games.
