The Orange Rush was on Monday, as Broncos fans lined up to memorialize the team’s Super Bowl 50 victory with wearable merchandise and logo- emblazoned odds and ends.
“I can’t even think about work right now,” said Tina Lovelace, owner of the Woodhouse Day Spa, as she shopped at a crowded Sports Authority store on Broadway in Denver.
At least 18 tables piled with Broncos gear lined a wall near the store’s entrance.
Lovelace was buying championship T-shirts for her husband and some of her employees. Her plans for Tuesday included taking two of her managers to breakfast and lunch, then partying with them all day, she said.
Her decision to reward the employees was spontaneous, she said.
“How often does this happen?” she said of the team’s Super Bowl victory over the Carolina Panthers on Sunday.
Among items for sale were grilling tools and bowls, wall clocks and dart boards that all bear the Broncos’ name.
But clothing, including $70 championship hoodies, got the most attention from shoppers.
Gray locker room T-shirts and hats, similar to those worn by victorious team members after the game, were the biggest sellers, said Brent Hubbard, Sports Authority manager.
“We are selling everything, but that is what is hot right now,” he added.
A stream of customers began arriving at 6 a.m., when the store opened.
“It hasn’t been constantly like this, but pretty steady,” Hubbard said as about 20 shoppers stood in line to make purchases, and more browsed tables full of clothing.
The store, which usually closes at 8 p.m. on Sunday, remained open until midnight after the Super Bowl and reopened three hours earlier than normal Monday.
Dick’s Sporting Goods stores in the area also had extended hours, closing at 1 a.m. Monday after the 24-10 victory and reopening at 6 a.m., said Brandon Yergey, a store spokesman.
Sales after the game exceeded expectations, Yergey said.
“As we welcomed fans in, we were just as excited as they were,” he said.
Reid Matsuda arrived at the Denver Sports Authority at about 10:15 a.m. after leaving three other sporting-goods stores that were already sold out of the T-shirts he wanted to buy for his daughters.
He found what he wanted in a pile of the blue Super Bowl champion shirts, the back panels decorated with the team roster.
Meghan Karcher was buying two hats and two shirts, one of them a gift for her father’s birthday. “I’m trying to convert him from a Giants fan,” she said.
Blue Grimes, owner of Out of the Blue, a Denver company that does screen printing on T-shirts, and his employees went to work after the game ended.
The company emblazoned nearly 3,500 three-color print, gray, short-sleeve shirts from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., he said.
The company printed the shirts for VF Imageware, a Tampa, Fla., company that “is tied in with the NFL,” Grimes said.
“They had three pickups, one at 2 (a.m.), one at 4 and one at 6, and as soon as they get back to a local warehouse in Denver, they have retailers there to pick them up,” Grimes said.
“It went really well. We averaged around 360 pieces an hour,” he said.
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671, tmcghee@denverpost.com or @dpmcghee
