Where Earnhardt Jr. goes, so goes Earnhardt Nation

He told Junior Nation that adidas' three stripes were cool, and they lined up in his draft to the retail counter.

When it comes to brand partnership, the Dale Earnhardt Jr.-adidas marriage fits like a glove.

"We're used to having passionate consumers come through our doors, but when you talk about Dale Jr., how people connect with him … we've gotten thousands of letters stating, 'Because you support Dale Jr., my whole family's going to buy adidas and my kids are going to wear adidas to school,'" said Mark Clinard, business unit director for U.S. Sports and Motorsports for adidas America.

I've seen it first-hand, thanks in large part to a delirious group of everyday folks who stood in front of a sporting goods store at the crack of a Daytona Beach dawn in mid-February. This snaking line of humanity offered a rather keen perspective of Junior's selling power.

Young and old, they hooted and hollered and wiggled like nobody's watching and puffy-painted their pasty-white bellies. All for a minute slice of Junior.

Krystle Forsythe, a teenager from north of Toronto, was one of the more subdued attendees. She stood at the head of the line, bleary-eyed and clad in National Guard pajama pants. But she hadn't slept.

It was 8:47 a.m. on the Friday before the Daytona 500, and Forsythe had napped just 90 minutes overnight. She and her mother, Diana Brock, manned this post at the door of the Sports Authority store across from Daytona International Speedway at 10:30 the previous evening.

What possessed these folks to forego naps and nourishment to stand at the door of a sporting goods store for 10 hours?

"Get Junior's autograph," Forsythe said, wiping her eyes.

Not that Junior was there, mind you. When the doors opened at 9, the first 88 fans in this line received an autographed Dale Earnhardt Jr. cap. The hats were pre-signed. But Forsythe and Brock didn't much care.

It wasn't about seeing Junior this time. It was about being the first in the world to grab the latest dimension of Junior Nation: the driver's signature adidas gear.

"We won't have this stuff in Canada for a while," said Brock, who hadn't slept a wink all night. "It's worth missing sleep to get it now."

Easy for her to say. She's a pro at the no-doze thing. She works nights.

Earnhardt is just the fourth professional athlete to ink a signature deal with adidas, joining international soccer icon David Beckham, NBA star Tracy McGrady and NFL running sensation Reggie Bush.

"He fits perfectly," Clinard said.

Feb. 15 marked the official launch of Earnhardt's personal adidas line, which currently consists of T-shirts, polos, hoodies, hats, jackets and workout pants.

"We were very happy to see the adidas partnership and product line come to fruition," said Thayer Lavielle, vice president of marketing for JR Motorsports. "The product style and quality has exceeded our expectations and fits perfectly into our brand direction. The launch in Daytona was a huge success, as evidenced by fan reaction and sales. No doubt, we are off to a great start with a great partner."

The line will eventually expand to include $200 driving shoes like those Earnhardt wears on race day, and -- get this -- his racing suit, too. It will retail for $2,000.

(What, pray tell, does a guy do with a $2,000 driving suit? Bake cookies in it? It is fire retardant, after all. Might cut down on the oven mitts or something …)

The suit, or some version of it, won't be available until mid-2009, Clinard said. But there is demand. Adidas spokeswoman Andrea Corso said she regularly receives e-mail inquiries from random folks.

"It's a regular thing now," she said.

Part of that, I figure, is because the helmet and driver's suit are the two pieces of memorabilia fans rarely get their hands on.

"We've had people say they want to buy the real suit, frame it and have it as a memento," Clinard said. "Then there's also so many requests from racers that want what Junior has."

These fans in front of the Sports Authority certainly did. For hours they stood in this roped-off line. Dozens of them. They chanted and danced and chugged AMP Energy drink in return for Junior-themed prizes. One of them, Anthony Binz of Port Orange, Fla., pranced around with an orange 88 painted on his belly. He won "best facial expression in response to a race car speeding by." You'd have thought he won the Power Ball.

And at 9 a.m., when the doors opened, they stormed in like a pack of locusts.

And bought. A lot. According to Corso, Sports Authority tripled its sales numbers from the same day in 2007. Overall, 2008 sales for Daytona 500 weekend doubled the 2007 numbers at the store.

Corso also said that adidas' JR Nation fan gear was the No. 2 adidas apparel item for the entire chain, which she said is substantial considering the Daytona Sports Authority location was the only store in the country to have product that first weekend.

"They exceeded what we were hoping for," Clinard said. "We aren't experts in this. We had no idea about the demand, but for our expectations for what we had down there, it surpassed what we were expecting."

And the wave didn't stop there.

"We've doubled our amount of adidas online responses from Daytona to Las Vegas, and the coolest part about it is 90 percent of those responses were first time ever visiting adidas," Clinard said. "So it allows people to see us for the first time. And seeing us through Junior, what he stands for, is just a huge opportunity for us."

Discussions between Earnhardt's group and adidas officials began a year ago. The shoemaker was already looking to inject some of its technologies -- namely its body-cooling ClimaCool system -- into NASCAR.

They felt they could truly benefit drivers from a product standpoint. Then they got word that Earnhardt was an adidas fan, and that he had, Clinard said, "thousands of pairs of adidas" footwear.

The initial meetings dealt with how adidas could assist Earnhardt inside the race car. His right pants leg bunches up. It's an annoyance.

"Our product guys salivated over that, making product that makes him feel better in the car," Clinard said. "We've been in the sport since the late '40s, early '50s. There are a lot of motorsports fans within the [company]."

Earnhardt isn't just a face. He's fully engaged in developing product, both for greater performance in the cockpit and greater return at retail.

"He gives us great feedback, immediate, on the technical side, but his design sense is cool, too," Clinard said. "He talks about his race shoe, he says, 'I want it to be clean. I want it to have bold stripes. That's what I like and my fans will like it, too.'

"He helped us co-create this product. Fans have never been able to buy fan wear where the driver actually helped create it. He's connected and knows what his fans want. That's a special skill he has."

Clinard mentioned receiving many inquiries about the prominent placement of the color orange in the new gear. Simple. It's Earnhardt's favorite color.

"When we first met with him he said, 'I buy everything you guys make with orange in it,'" Clinard said. "All those little details are fun for us.

"With a lot of athletes you try to talk about product specifics and they wander in and out of being interested. But with Junior, he's dialed in. He knows what he wants and has a sense of what his fans will appreciate. That's a unique thing, even in our world."

The ardent passion of the NASCAR fan is an eye-opener, too.

Adidas held an event at its performance store on the Vegas Strip last weekend prior to the NASCAR race, and the consummate example of the Junior Factor occurred: A woman located a desirable Dale Jr. T-shirt, went to the cash register and bought it, took her shirt off -- right there in the store -- and put on the Junior shirt and walked out the door, leaving her old shirt for the store to discard.

The Pied Striper, indeed.