Julie Ertz (8) and the USWNT are just scratching the surface of their own marketability. (AP)

Julie Ertz still has the poster saved somewhere. When she was in grade school, the U.S. women's national team came to Phoenix and, as a young soccer-playing fan, Ertz desperately wanted a memento – but the pickings were slim.

“The only thing I could leave with so I could remember that moment was a poster,” Ertz says. “It was the only thing I could have to support the team, and I was a kid wanting a T-shirt so bad.”

More than a decade later once Ertz became a member of the USWNT herself, she found not much had changed. Even after winning the World Cup in 2015, when the team was as popular as it had ever been, there was no way for the players to connect with fans and capitalize on their own success at the same time.

“So many fans would ask us, ‘How can we get this? How do we get that? How can we support you?’” Ertz says. "We didn't even have a deal to sell our own player jerseys. So many people wanted them but couldn't find them. We felt like we were marketable and people wanted product but we couldn’t get it out there.”

Since last year, however, that has been changing quickly.

Lamenting all the missed opportunities after the U.S. won the World Cup four years ago, the players fought to take back control of their own image rights in their last collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer. They've been building a new business arm ever since with REP Worldwide, a brand management agency that the USWNT co-founded with players from the NFL and the WNBA.

It was easier said than done. With no track record and no existing business relationships, the USWNT Players Association set out to monetize the team's image rights for the first time.

But winning the World Cup again this summer in France sure offered a heck of a launch pad.

View photos Megan Rapinoe 's iconic celebratory pose from this summer's Women's World Cup is one thing the USWNT can sell. (Getty) More

The USWNT Players Association now has 26 deals signed with licensees who are authorized to sell products featuring the team and its star players. Those deals represent a wide range of products, from shirts in a deal with Homage, to the covers of Wheaties boxes with General Mills, to bobbleheads with Foco.

“In 2015, the licensing revenue was $0 to the Players Association,” says Becca Roux, the director of the USWNT Players Association. “Now we're on pace for $1 million this year. That's a huge difference, but we're still barely scratching the surface. We had no sales data going into this World Cup to attract these licensees and get on the floor of these major retailers, but it has done well.”

Now, with proof that USWNT merchandise will sell since the World Cup, it's made Steven Scebelo's job a little bit easier. He is the president of REP Worldwide, which spearheads the acquisition of new licensees.

Target, one of the largest retailers in the country, featured player-specific T-shirts in stores across the country this summer via a licensing deal with Icon Sports. Through June, they sold four times their minimum guaranteed in royalties, Scebelo says, and that period doesn't even cover the World Cup final or the aftermath of the USWNT's big win. Final sales reports from July aren't ready yet.

BreakingT, which sells T-shirts in real time in response to viral moments, had its single-best day of sales during the Women's World Cup, in large part thanks to water cooler moments like Alex Morgan's tea-sipping celebration and Megan Rapinoe's iconic statuesque pose, Scebelo adds.

Nike announced during the World Cup – before the U.S. won the tournament – that the USWNT's home kit was the company's best-selling soccer jersey ever for a single season.

Even before the USWNT had lifted the trophy in Lyon, all the signs were there – this team had a market if there were companies willing to tap into it.

“The day after they won, that Monday, we followed up with people who didn't move forward earlier to see if they had second thoughts,” Scebelo says. “In one of our first calls, the person said, ‘I should've taken this license six months ago.’”