THE TIMES: Regent Street’s Trendiest Shop? An American trading card import

Queues for West End stores are nothing new. Cult fashion brands like Supreme have a permanent security team; the Chinese store Pop Mart sells “blind box” Labubu collectibles and has a consistent crowd snaking down Oxford Street towards John Lewis.

But the flood of interest in the Fanatics’ shop at the bottom of Regent Street has caught even the sports impresario behind the venture by surprise.

“We opened the store earlier this year and it’s been wildly above expectations. I think we thought this would be a $6 or $8 million store, just about introducing people” to trading cards, Michael Rubin said.

“It’s going to be a $25 million store. It’s three times above projections. There’s so much demand for what we’re doing.” That demand has been helped by star turns — Lewis Hamilton, Alan Shearer, Rio Ferdinand and a host of other athletes have showed up at the store for events — but day after day, Fanatics fanatics are queuing up outside.