• by Karl Greenberg , November 3, 2011

Ford has launched a site that lets visitors buy Ford-branded items with which to embellish their garages and man (or woman) caves.

The www.fansaddit.com site, which Ford launched at the SEMA show in Vegas this week, lets visitors view and buy such licensed merchandise as magnets, wall clocks and bar stools, lockers, toolboxes and professional-grade work benches.

What's different is that the products appear in a themed space, a garage, for instance, so the products are depicted as they might "live" in the owner's environment. The site lets users interact with each of these products.

This is the first time Ford has had a dedicated site for licensed gear that puts the products in a virtual space, in this case a garage, rather than merely on a bill-of-fare type list of goods.

Regina Wilson, product licensing manager at Ford, said in a company release that the point of putting the items in a virtual garage space rather than on a simple pick-and-price list was that people want to see the products as they might look in their own spaces. “Thematic areas that demonstrate passion for a particular music band, sports team or, in this case, brand, have become very popular,” said Watson.

The site is actually owned by Ford licensee Iconic Brand Collection LLC. The products the site sells are not made by Ford, but by other licensee companies. Ford said one example is Cornerstone Case Goods, maker of cabinetry-related furniture with Ford brand identifiers.

The site shows a virtual garage that visitors can morph into different themes like racing, vintage Mustang, Mustang Boss 302 or F-150 SVT Raptor, the latter referring to Ford's in-house customized pickup truck.  

Putting the cursor over an item in the garage launches a window showing price and the ubiquitous shopping basket option. 

“This is much different than the old way of doing things, where a company has a website and basically says, ‘Here is a picture of what we have for sale, take it or leave it,’” said Derek Carlock, manager, Iconic Brand Collection.

Consumers can either buy items already designed to align with various Ford brands and vehicles (there's a workstation and full-size locker that features imagery around the 2012 Mustang Boss 302) or visitors to the site can use visuals from FordImages.com, a customizing site with some 8,000 images including vehicles and such historical imagery as limited-edition prints, vintage signs and ads. One can then apply those images to the products one chooses from the merchandise site.