IF YOU WANT to sell a few Christmas jumpers, you could do a lot worse than get the lads from One Direction to wear them – on national US television.
That’s the coup that the duo behind Ireland’s Funky Christmas Jumpers pulled off this week, part of a deliberate strategy to get celebrities behind their novelty seasonal knits.
The 7-year-old business is the brain child of Donal McSharry and Fabio Molle, who were on their way back from a “jumper emergency” at band member Niall Horan’s Mullingar home this afternoon.
“The phone’s just been hopping – it’s a tight sales window that we have each year and our goal was to have the entire band wearing our jumpers,” McSharry told TheJournal.ie.
We just pursued our contacts to make it happen. The was about 6 weeks of work involved to get there.”
The band busted out a rendition of Santa Claus is Coming to Town using classroom instruments on NBC’s The Tonight Show with host Jimmy Fallon – with all members except Harry Styles kitted out in the brand’s jumpers.
And the Irish operation was quick to cash in on the publicity – scoring 29,000-odd retweets and 55,000 favourites for this effort:
From there, the band’s global fan base did enough to make sure that message made its way around around the world.
McSharry said he and Molle had been working on a deliberate tactic of targeting stars with their wares over the past few years – and they had built themselves up to be the “celebrity outfitter in terms of the Christmas jumper”.
Golfer Rory McIlroy, and David Beckham and his family are among the celebs who have been on the receiving ends of Funky specials.
The Late Late Show’s Ryan Tubridy also got behind the fad for St Patrick’s Day. Here his jumper looks suspiciously similar to the one Horan was rocking on TV:
McSharry said he wasn’t worried about the Christmas jumper trend fading – although they were still developing other products to broaden their range.
“Every year somebody tries to doubt us. Well, it get bigger every year. We just keep having a load of fun … first and foremost we try to put smiles on faces.
“We are responsible making marriages happen and for marriage break-ups. The works really.”
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