Direction D
The same shirt, for as long as you want it.
The club settles its design once and keeps it; we buy its cloth in one go and hold it, so every shirt after the first comes faster, matches, and costs what it cost the first time.
This direction drawn against the market as it is today
Swipe the picture sideways to see all of it.
- Big brands via distributors (Joma, Nike, Macron)
- Local sports shop (Deportes Polos type)
- Custom specialists (Aimar, Wade, Panda)
- EKANA todaycheaper than the specialists, no shop of its own
- Direction D
The situation
A small club picks a kit design and replaces it every two or three seasons. Nobody chose that rhythm; it is the shape of the trade that sells to the club. So the club buys extra in the first year to be safe, and deliberately too little in the last, because whatever is left over when the design dies is money it never sees again.
What we saw
- The design's end date is what causes the trouble. Over-ordering at the start and under-ordering at the end are the same fear, and both disappear the moment the design stops having an end date.
- Clubs already keep designs longer than the trade admits. One club has worn the same design three seasons running, multi-year deals are negotiated club by club, and academies rarely change design at all.
- Both sides already prefer the repeat. At renewal a supplier usually holds the same quote for the same design, and that is EKANA's own practice, so sameness is quietly the good outcome for everybody and nobody sells it.
More of what we saw
- Half of our own wait is the material. New fabric takes ten to fourteen days, and another ten to fourteen if the colour has to be dyed. The sewing is not what makes a kit slow.
- A specific fabric can carry a minimum purchase bigger than one club's order, which is where our flexibility hits a wall. The leftover is only a problem because the design it belongs to is going to die.
- A second batch can come back unlike the first. Custom kit cannot be returned once it is made, and a fresh dye lot two years later is a different shade of the same colour.
What we do differently
- The club settles one design and keeps it for a stated number of years, and we commit with it: that design stays available, at the same quote, for the whole term.
- We buy the club's fabric once, in the quantity the factory wants, and hold it. We already do this for academies and for nobody else.
- Every order after the first loses the material wait and the dyeing wait, because the cloth is already in our store in the club's own colours.
More of what we do differently
- Every order after the first comes off that same cloth, so a shirt bought in year four stands next to one bought in year one and looks like the same kit.
- What still changes each year is said at the first meeting, not when a president objects: the sponsor's mark and the names and numbers are pressed on afterwards and can be replaced without touching the shirt underneath.
- A genuine new design is still possible, and what it costs is written into the deal before anyone signs: every family buys again. That is what it costs today as well; nobody says so.
- One design, worked on properly. A shirt somebody will wear for five years deserves more time than one that dies in two, and it takes longer to arrive.
What we stop doing
- We stop selling a new design. There is one, it is made once, and after that there is no design service left to buy.
- We stop carrying a wide catalogue. Only garments that can be repeated for years stay on the list.
- We stop being flexible on the one term that matters here. The design is fixed for the term and that is not negotiable.
- We stop arriving at renewal with a reason to redraw the shirt, which is the trade's own way of making next year's order happen.
The message to the club
Choose the shirt once. We buy the cloth and keep it, and for as long as you want that shirt you can order more of it, and it will match.
Who buys
The club president, at the moment his current supplier contract runs out, which is the only moment he can move. He is being asked for a commitment rather than a preference, so he has to be proud of the design he is committing to, and the design work is where this direction spends more rather than less.
Who pays
Families pay for kit the way they do today, at the same price. Nothing here is sold as an upgrade and nothing is added to the club's own budget. What stops being paid is the re-buy that lands on every family when a design is replaced.
The package
Drawn as the club would see it, it is on what we would present to the club. Item by item, it is this.
What is in it
- One design, held: the club's own design, sublimated, fixed for the years the deal names, with an alternate agreed at the same time for colour clashes and federation rules.
- The cloth, bought and kept: we buy the fabric once in the quantity the factory wants and hold it in our own store, in the club's colours, for the life of the design.
- A top-up whenever the club needs one: five shirts in March, or in year four, is a draw against cloth we already own and artwork the factory already holds.
- The same shade and the same quote: every run comes off the material bought at the start, so a new shirt does not stand out next to a four-year-old one, and a repeat is priced as a repeat for as long as the design lives.
- The year's changes, pressed on: the sponsor's mark and the names and numbers go on afterwards and can be changed every season without a new shirt.
- A way out, priced before signing: a genuine new design can be bought. It means every family buys again, and the deal says so at the start rather than at the argument.
What is deliberately not in it
- A new look every season: there is one design and it stays. A president who wants the freedom to redraw his shirt whenever he likes should not sign this.
- A shirt in days: a top-up still crosses from Egypt. What goes is the material wait, not the shipping.
- The club's website, its badge and a season of posts: a different offer for a different appetite, and nothing here pays for it.
- Blank shirts held in Madrid, and clothing for the town: this holds cloth rather than finished garments, and it sells to the squad rather than to the street.
Which exercise each part of this came from
- The strategy canvas as it is today
- Eleven factors, and one that is not among them: how often a club's kit design is replaced. Every supplier group does it on the same rhythm, so it never became a row, and that is exactly why it is available to take away.
- The buyer utility map
- Two squares of real pain no supplier works on: a club buys extra in a design's first year and too little in its last, and a second batch can come back unlike the first. One move answers both.
- The six paths
- A club trades up to a brand for a catalogue it can reorder from and trades down to a specialist for a design of its own. Nobody has ever kept both, and that pair is what this direction keeps.
- The three tiers of non-customers
- What keeps the reluctant buyers reluctant is minimums and weeks of waiting. Both of those are removed for every order after the first, without a new factory and without local printing.