SOMETIMES you have to pay attention to ideas that go bump in the night.
Mitchell Modell, president of the family-owned sporting goods store, certainly will after awakening in the middle of the night with a brainstorm for a Met’s fans’ sweatshirt.
“Gotta Believe” is what Modell was thinking, and as soon as he got to work later that morning, he put his lawyers to work researching whether that slogan was available to trademark. Hours later, the legal eagles found it was not spoken for and immediately registered it.
“I then sent a buyer by plane to pick up 10,000 sweatshirts and had them printed up 24 hours later,” Modell told The Post. The exec even got some free publicity when he struck a deal with the Police Athletic League to donate $2 per $10 sweatshirt to the charity. While it is not unheard of for retailers to snare exclusive pieces of designer or branded merchandise for at least a few weeks, it is rare for stores to own a popular mark or brand.
Modell doesn’t know if this is the start of a new trend or not. Neither is it known if Modell is losing any sleep worrying about the next hot item.