This venture was an undertaking by two passionate alumni, John Colantoni and Jamie Bosworth. A fan run initiative to support NIL, this was not supported by the university. It wasn’t discouraged, but it was done without university help and is a separate NIL venture. The importance of that is that John and Jamie were responsible for concept to shipment and everything in between.
The demand fell far short of expectations (~90% if you want a number) and far short the production run for G-Fore to ship directly to buyers. Because of this, individual shipments are now on them. As a measure of goodwill, they have taken on the financial burden so that 100% of your purchase price is supporting the NIL effort as the cost of the hats and shipping are borne by them.
Now that you have two very successful alumni who run multiple businesses responsible for shipping individual hats, I hope that you understand the delay. In fact, the hats have been in Fort Lauderdale for some time while John has been in Europe for extended business and a little rest and relaxation, but that doesn’t get you the hats.
To remedy this, the hats are on their way to NJ to a third alumnus, myself. I will be taking on the distribution of the hats. This is certainly not because I have all the time in the world as I have a career, twins where I’m soccer coach and personal Uber and, well, a pretty full life/schedule. But my support for Seton Hall and friendship with/respect for John and Jamie led to me burying myself deep into this venture. So now I have inserted myself where, I remind you, 100% of your purchase price is being donated to the school.
Had the venture not run at 10% of expectations, the hats would be in your hands directly. That’s the bad news. The good news is that they are very much on their way to being in your hands shortly. The expectation was that two alumni had an idea that would put $75,000 into NIL (1,000 hats, $75 NIL donation per $105 purchase, $30 for cost and shipping). The reality is that just over 100 hats were sold, still putting over $10k directly to NIL with the cost of hats/shipping being borne by the volunteers.
This is not meant to make excuses or garner attaboys. This is transparency to help make you aware of the efforts that are made behind the scenes by caring alumni who are not in the apparel or shipping industries. We thank you for your patience and understanding.
Go Pirates.
Keith Sadlowski, BS ‘97, MBA ‘02
