Intro
Why this work exists
Where we started
- June 2026. Karim and Nader ran a workshop to pick one project to grow. EKANA won, because it already works: clubs bought, were satisfied, one renewed, production in Egypt gives real margin, and Nader knows every part of it. The workshop also found the problem: too few clients, because nobody sells to clubs full-time.
- 25 August, 2026. A strategy meeting with Akram. The next step agreed: write a strategy and present it to him.
- 26 August, 2026. Blue Ocean Strategy became the method. The reason:
- The Madrid club market is a red ocean: every supplier says roughly the same thing and competes on price, and the big brands win on their name rather than their fabric.
- EKANA lost the Carabanchel deal to Joma on price alone, and EKANA was already the cheapest custom supplier in the market.
- So price alone cannot win. The way out is to be worth choosing on things no other supplier offers at all.
The process we followed
The book gives five steps, in order. We followed them.
| Step | The question | The tool | What comes out |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Get started | What business, and who is in the room? | Scope and team | The business the process runs on |
| 2. Understand where you are now | What does the market look like today, honestly? | The strategy canvas | One picture everyone agrees is true |
| 3. Imagine where you could be | Where does the industry hurt buyers, and who does it never serve? | The buyer utility map; the three tiers of non-customers | The raw material for new ideas |
| 4. Find how you get there | What could we stop doing, do less of, do more of, or do that nobody else does? | The six paths; the four actions | Several candidate directions, each a new line on the canvas with a tagline |
| 5. Make your move | Which one, does it work in reality, does the money work? | The family's decision; tests with real clubs; the four questions below | One move, priced and costed, ready to test with real clubs |
Two kinds of thing sit inside those five steps, and it helps to keep them separate.
The tools we used to find directions, each one a different way of looking for the same thing:
- The strategy canvas: the market today, drawn as one picture so every supplier can be compared honestly.
- The buyer utility map: where the industry causes real pain today, and where it already competes hard.
- The three tiers of non-customers: who does not buy from the industry at all today, and why.
- The six paths: six different ways of looking past the obvious rivals for an idea nobody has tried.
What every direction has to carry, once found:
- A new line on the canvas: what the direction would offer, drawn against what the market offers today.
- The four actions: what it stops doing and does less of, so it can afford what it raises and creates.
- A tagline: one honest line a club president would understand and repeat back.
What every direction has to pass, three tests read off the finished picture:
- Focus. It concentrates on a few things instead of trying to be good at everything.
- Divergence. Its shape is genuinely different from every rival's.
- A tagline. It can be said in one honest line a club president would repeat.
And four questions, asked in that order, so that a direction which fails one is not rescued by the next:
- Does a club actually want this?
- Would enough clubs pay this price?
- Can we make it at that price and still earn?
- What would stop a club saying yes?
What this site contains
- The exercises and what came out. Four pages, one per tool, each showing what the tool is, what we did with it, and what it produced: the strategy canvas, the buyer utility map, the three tiers of non-customers, and the six paths.
- The baseline. What EKANA sells today, treated as the line every new direction has to beat, not as an idea of its own.
- The four directions, A to D. Each one gets five pages: the idea itself; the canvas and the four actions; whether it actually works, tested properly; what we would present to a club; and what EKANA itself becomes if we choose it.
- Side by side. All four directions and the baseline compared on one page, so they can be weighed against each other.
- An appendix. Every idea considered, sorted by theme; the book's terms, checked and defined; and where every fact on this site comes from.
The family reads this at its own pace, then meets to decide together. At the meeting where we decide, everyone votes, says why, and we pick one or two directions to take to real clubs. Every verdict on this site is written to be argued with: if you disagree with one, that meeting is where you say so, and we change it.