A Kansas City, Missouri, retailer has been feeling the economic power of Taylor Swift this week.
That has been the case for the Westside Storey, a boutique in Kansas City, since Sunday, when singer Taylor Swift donned a vintage Chiefs sweatshirt while taking in her beau Travis Kelce and the Chiefs go head-to-head with the Buffalo Bills in the Sunday football game. The black-and-red Legends apparel was, according to multiple reports, ordered from the shop.
Owner Chris Harrington told FOX Business on Thursday the Westside Storey fielded an online order back in late October “that was a little larger than a typical online order” and received a possible “medium fraud” alert that “we had to look into.” The addresses, he said, were “both tied to Taylor Swift and her camp.”
In addition to the one she wore at the game, the order contained four other vintage Chiefs sweatshirts. The black-and-red one, priced at $250, was listed as sold out on the Westside Storey’s website as of Thursday evening.
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“We were confident it went to her camp and kind of waited anxiously for like six weeks because she didn’t have a lot of football appearances and had her tour in South America,” Harrington told FOX Business.
While Westside Storey did experience a “let down” when Swift appeared at the game against the Green Bay Packers not wearing any of the apparel from the order, they “held out hope and waited for the next time that she might show up,” according to Harrington. When she appeared at the Sunday game in the black-and-red piece, he said he “thought it was so cool.”
Sunday marked the sixth Chiefs game that Swift has been spotted at amid her romance with Kelce. She recently told Time magazine she has gone to games just “to support Travis.”
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Harrington told FOX Business he learned of her appearing in the garb after his friend sent him a text about it and his girlfriend “came running down saying ‘Oh my god, Taylor’s wearing our sweatshirt.’”
“Just the concept of that sweatshirt being in my closet just like a month ago and now seeing it on her and the biggest stage, the biggest star, was surreal,” Harrington said. “I know we didn’t necessarily create that sweatshirt, but it was just cool to be connected to it.”
Swift wearing the vintage Chiefs apparel quickly brought people to the Westside Storey, with the boutique’s website on Sunday getting a major “increase in sales that first, like, five or six hours from what we typically sell,” the owner said. That night, he said the store “had a consistent about 400 people that were on the website” compared to its usual five to 10 during a Chiefs game.
The rush has apparently continued. The store has had sales growth of “500%, 600%, today we’re 1,000% over our typical sales,” Harrington reported, linking it to more people finding out and to media coverage.
Swift’s apparent ability to boost sales has not been limited to Westside Storey.
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StubHub said earlier this month that nearly three times as many tickets for Kansas City Chiefs home games got picked up on the ticket marketplace in the 24 hours after Swift went to her first game on Sept. 24. The ticket sales volume also reached a level that was higher than it had ever sold in a single day since the season kicked off, according to the company.
Additionally, the cities she has performed in as part of her “Eras Tour” have seen their economies get a lift from her. The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, for example, said in May that the tour brought “tens of millions in direct visitor spending” to Music City.