Doug Verb And The Business Of Inflatables

When the Orlando Magic unveil their new jersey tomorrow, they’ll try to make the announcement as "big" as possible.

That’s good news to Doug Verb, who has developed a great niche in putting the world’s largest jerseys on huge inflatables.

Over the past decade, Verb’s company, Action Sports Americahas made over 250 of these things, with his business seemingly getting better by the minute.

The inflatables he sells are typically 15 feet tall, each measuring 22 feet cuff to cuff. And Verb is well versed on his selling points, telling us it only takes up 40 square feet in floor space, can be set up and broken down in less than 10 minutes and can fold into a bag that only weighs 35 pounds.

It was 13 years ago, when Verb heard that sporting goods retailer Modell’s was going to unveil a huge Philadelphia Flyers jersey on the statue of William Penn on top of City Hall, that he realized that this was a legitimate business.

Since then, things have been brisk, helped in part by the fact that there’s always a new sports logo to unveil or something to push. Verb recently made a huge jersey for the unveiling of the Oklahoma City Thunder and he’s produced a big shirt for the NBA for the past six seasons to advertise the championship team’s locker room design.

Verb also sells teams on the price. He says that over the years, he’s gotten it down to one of the best promotional values. Teams pay in between $6,500 and $7,500 depending on the intricacy of the design.

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