NEYMAR da Silva Santos Júnior, the world’s most expensive footballer, has teamed up with a Scottish entrepreneur and University of Glasgow graduate to launch a new range of children’s merchandise.
The Brazilian superstar, who transferred to French club Paris Saint-Germain for a record £198 million in 2017, is working with product development and sourcing expert Kian Golzari to launch bedding, towels and pillows featuring his signature, avatar and player number under the Active Dreamers brand.
Mr Golzari’s family has been manufacturing and supplying outdoors clothing and kit to clients including the London 2012 Olympics, the Ministry of Defence and the team supporting Scots endurance cyclist Mark Beaumont for more than 30 years.
As part of his Masters degree in business administration and management at Glasgow University’s Adam Smith Business School, Mr Golzari, 32, spent a year at the University of Miami in Florida. He is an avid basketball fan and was approached by Neymar’s team after fulfilling his dream of becoming an official supplier to America’s National Basketball Association (NBA).
“The Active Dreamers brand was set up with a friend of mine who I studied with at the University of Miami – Jack McClinton – and who played in the NBA with the San Antonio Spurs,” Mr Golzari explained. “The first range we created for the NBA featured Steph Curry (of the Golden State Warriors; one of the NBA’s highest rated and best paid – $40m – player this season), who is an old school friend of Neymar’s. When Steph posted his Active Dreamers range on social media, Neymar saw them and wanted us to create a range for him.”
“The message behind the products is to inspire the youth to dream bigger. If they’re sleeping in products that look like Neymar, they can imagine they’re taking on their hero’s superpowers – and dream about
being able to play like their
favourite athlete.”
The deal was sealed in 2018 when Mr Golzari travelled to Brazil to sign a two-year contract with Neymar’s commercial team, while the footballer was in Russia for the 2018 World Cup.
“Probably the most appealing thing about Neymar is that he’s got
135 million followers on Instagram,” Mr Golzari said. “If just one percent of his followers buys our product, that’s 1.3m units. And if half a per cent buy, that’s 650,000 units, which is
significant business.”
Neymar, known as Neymar Jr, officially unveiled the product line on his Instagram page last month with the message: “Thank you @activedreamers @manifestmcclinton for creating this collection for kids across the world to Dream Bigger. Head over to www.activedreamers.com now to see the collection!”
Four and a half million viewers watched the launch video. The deal involves Neymar posting the products on his social media channels.
With the NBA season currently suspended, Mr Golzari said the coronavirus had affected both Chinese manufacturing and spending habits, but he was excited about the product line’s future potential.
Mr Golzari has lived and worked in China for ten years while sourcing manufacturers for his Livingston-based family business, Highlander Outdoor. The business was set up in 1985 by his parents, Bahram and Atie Golzari, and is now run by Golzari’s brother, Ramin Golzari. Previously based in Edinburgh, Mr Golzari moved to Los Angeles at the end of 2019.
“I decided I wanted a new challenge and that’s when I became a partner in Active Dreamers,” Mr Golzari said.
“It’s been moving so fast, so quickly that I’ve just been dealing with things as they’ve come along. But now my ultimate goal is to manufacture, design and source for all these athletes and players – whether it’s football or basketball.”
Mr Golzari has personally sourced more than 2,500 products for brands including Tesco, Argos and Aldi. The relationships he built while living in China also led him to manufacture products for businesses including Proctor & Gamble, Visa, Panasonic, the NBA and the United Nations. He mentors more than 100 top Amazon sellers.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here