Did your old coach ever tell you that ‘you can look like a cricketer, even if you can’t play?’ Does that principle extend to looking like a team? Does uniformity improve the team culture and performance? Is or could it be a nice little earner for the club through sponsorship and/or supplier kickbacks? Do you benefit from the brand profile of members wearing club casual and training gear in the local community?
But what are the practical challenges? What brand? Price or cutting edge design? Can you get enough people to wear it? How long does it take to get everyone looking the same – how many generations of club kit are on display in your teams? Do you need to subsidise? Does it suck up all your shirt sponsors money? Are the big brands affordable – will your younger players wear anything less? Can the smaller or local brands deliver what you need? And what happens if they withdraw from the market or go bust? Or just leave your disgruntled members with undelivered kit in July having paid their cash in March. Or worse still, the club left with piles of unwanted and unsaleable stock.
So what do you do? What are the considerations? New to the field? Or nursing burned fingers? Have you battled through the minefield that is club kit provision?
Whether yes or no, it is a recurring theme in past discussions and a subject ripe for a definitive view of who is doing what, who the favoured suppliers are, what people are paying and solutions to the key challenges.
So please take a few minutes to respond to this short survey. All responses will be treated in confidence and only anonymous aggregate results will be published, for Network members and respondents to the survey, by the END OF JANUARY.
You will find the survey HERE
In the meantime, post your comments in the accompanying discussion for members on the LinkedIn group.