El Paso Chihuahuas setting record for Internet sales

Chihuahuas may be small in stature, but the El Paso Chihuahuas are apparently not!

The new team store Downtown has been packed every day since the name was announced on Tuesday afternoon.

“I think El Paso has baseball fever right now,” said El Paso baseball fan Jimmy Cardenas, who is one of thousands that has already purchased Chihuahuas merchandise. “Like it or not, the team is here. We might as well support it and have fun with it.”

Steffen Poessiger works for Mithoff-Burton, the advertising agency in charge of marketing the El Paso Chihuahuas both locally and nationally.

“It’s impressive,” Poessiger said. “You’re seeing more and more Chihuahuas gear all over town. We’re getting P-R mentions all over the country. In the last two days, you’re seeing the impact that it’s had and we have absolutely something to work with here, both on a local level and national. When you actually look at what this is doing for El Paso both inside and outside it’s marketing genius.”

Like the team name or not, Chihuahuas merchandise is flying off the shelves. They’re already setting records, according to team officials, for sales online.

“Minor League Baseball indicated we’re trending to be one of the highest teams if not thee highest team ever after an unveiling through Internet sales,” Chihuahuas General Manager Brad Taylor said. “We’ve already gotten orders from 34 different states, Mexico, Canada … So this is not just here it’s (all over) and we’re very grateful for that.”

Taylor said it’s completely surpassed early expectations, leaving team officials scrambling to restock the store and tell people online orders could take up to two weeks to receive.

“The first 24 hours we were just blown away,” he said. “Similar to the amount of people that have liked us on Facebook, we’ve already surpassed probably seven or eight Triple-A teams that have been in existence for a long time and certainly probably half of the minor league teams that exist. So we’re feeling pretty lucky.”

While the El Paso Chihuahuas Facebook page has surpassed 16,000 likes, the Facebook page stating the Chihuahuas name needs to change has nearly 8,000 likes.

Taylor and Poessiger said they are still hearing lots of complaints, but if Chihuahuas merchandise sales with very little advertising is any indication at this point, they think the number of likes for the name will only go up from here.