A slew of Olympics franchise stores will sprout up across China at the end of this year or the beginning of next as Olympic Games fever starts to heat up.

Organizers of the Beijing Olympics Games said they would allow individuals to open Olympic franchise stores by the first quarter of 2008.
  
"We will not accept applications from individual dealers until the end of this year or the beginning of next year when sales of franchised goods are expected to increase rapidly", said Tang Yonghong, an official with the marketing department of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG).
  
There are currently 63 franchise retailers in China, with a score of them based in Beijing, said Tang.
  
To expand the marketing network faster, BOCOG has authorized these retailers to have their own distributors but the stores run by the franchise retailers must outnumber those run by the distributors.

  
There will be about 10,000 franchise stores by the time the Games open, said Tang.
  
According to the BOCOG website, as soon as the floodgates are lifted, the number of Olympic franchise stores across China will increase almost tenfold to 4,000 to 5,000 as small and medium sized cities hop on the Olympic bandwagon.
  
Tang said BOCOG cut the prices of franchised goods by eight to 10 percent at the beginning of this year.
  
Analysts forecast sales of franchised goods will hit US$1 billion. The BOCOG's sales target is a more conservative US$700 million, according to previous reports.

(Xinhua News Agency April 12, 2007)