Iceland jersey makers struggle to deal with ‘enormous’ demands since Euro 2016 heroics

Iceland's form at Euro 2016, including their last 16 victory over England, has captured the imagination of football fans. Dan Mullan / Getty Images

Iceland’s run at Euro 2016 has drawn parallels with Leicester City’s remarkable Premier League title win. And like it was for the English champions, the Scandinavian country is finding it hard to meet unexpected demand for its team’s jerseys.

The representatives of Iceland, a country the size of Leicester with a population of about 300,000, are playing in their first major football tournament. They shocked the world on Monday by eliminating England with a 2-1 victory in the last 16 at Nice, France.

The result cost England manager Roy Hodgson his job and meant more orders for Sport Company Ehf, Iceland’s official jersey distributor, and Errea, the Italian sportswear company that makes the apparel.

More from Euro 2016:

• Greg Lea's Euro 2016 talking points: Deserving Iceland simply beat England in every phase

• Richard Jolly on England's failure: A country and football team in crisis crash out of Euro 2016 an embarrassment

• Richard Jolly on Wales v Belgium: Gareth Bale and Wales have earned right to gloat as Britain's best

Iceland’s national stadium has a capacity of 9,800, and Sport Company had estimated demand for jerseys to be about triple that amount, according to its general manager, Thorvaldur Olafsson. That has proved to be woefully short as Iceland took off on a surprise run to the quarter-finals, where they will meet hosts France on Sunday.

“This is just like the Leicester adventure,” Olafsson said from Reykjavik, where he was printing the player names on the jerseys the team will wear against France. He will deliver them to the team after flying to Paris on a special charter with fans.

“The requests on our website are enormous, but you are not able to buy them anymore because we can’t meet the demand,” he said, adding shirts are being shipped to retailers.

Iceland are also providing a boon to Errea after becoming the Parma-based company’s first team to make it through to a European Championship.

The majority of national jerseys are produced by Nike Inc, Adidas AG and Puma SE.

Errea, which has two factories, is just about keeping up with demand from retailers because it produces everything in house, according to Fabrizio Taddei, its export manager.

“We are working 24/7 with a night shift, and so we are every day sending out all the shirts we have,” Taddei said. “We are a manufacturer as well. So our strength is that we can almost reply on demand. But it’s havoc here at the moment.”

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