As the Ohio State football team rang up a second consecutive victory over Michigan last weekend, local venders rang up a vast number of merchandise sales at their registers.

“It was phenomenal, just phenomenal. Both the day before the game and the day after the game … and actually ever since,” said Kathy Smith, the general manager of Long’s Bookstore and the Ohio State University Bookstore. “We got in the ‘Gold Pants-Michigan Score’ T-shirts about two hours after the game ended and sold out in 21 minutes.”

Almost 300 were sold in that 21-minute span, but the demand for the shirts was still unsatisfied, she said.

“The next morning, we had 40 people in line waiting at the doors before we opened.”

Kelly Dawes, part owner of College Traditions, said her store is being overrun by those infected with scarlet and gray fever.

“Since the game, we’ve been doing a lot of Victory tees, and now we have the Big Ten Locker Room caps and tees along with Fiesta Bowl goods that just came in today,” she said. “(The fans) are buying them out of the box.”

Smith and Dawes said their stores were able to get the merchandise with the Michigan score on it on game day because of agreements with local printers. Once the game ended, printers added the score to the shirts’ pre-designed screens and began churning them out.

“We just took a small order that night, so we could get it here in time to sell it before we closed,” Smith said. “The rest we took the next morning.”

“It’s just a lot of planning from the manufacturers and retailers combined to get that stuff on the shelves quickly,” Dawes said.

College Traditions’ sales for Michigan weekend were higher than in years past.

“It was completely different this year. Leading up to it, we’ve just been swamped,” Dawes said.

“The way the season kind of unfolded, with all the close games and intensity, it has created a whole new level of excitement,” Smith said.

Both said they expect to move a lot of merchandise over the holiday season. Their stores have already received hundreds of mail and Internet orders, they said.

Venders of unlicensed products have an opportunity to cash in on the team’s success.

Rick Van Brimmer, director of the Office of Trademark and Licensing at OSU, said counterfeit merchandise follows normal patterns of sales. Because of the short amount of time between now and the Fiesta Bowl, there is an increased risk of a “hot market situation,” he said. These situations allow unlicensed venders to print and unload their merchandise quickly, leaving little evidence behind.

“Bootleggers don’t stay in one place at one time, the ones that are at Ohio State one weekend are operating in somebody else’s backyard the next,” Van Brimmer said.

The university has patrols out on the streets for every home game, looking for bootleggers, he said.

“We use plain clothes policemen, as well as private investigators who walk through the crowd,” Van Brimmer said. “Sometimes bootleggers will walk right up to us.”

He said the university cannot be sure how much money is made through unlicensed selling of merchandise. He believes OSU is losing in unpaid royalties,

“A small percentage of a huge number is still a big deal,” he said.

Van Brimmer said his office is working with representatives of the Fiesta Bowl to ensure the protection of their trademarks as well.