Direction A
The canvas and the four actions
The move from 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
- The new lineYour club, looking like a real club, without paying more
The four actions
Eliminate
- Bidding the price down to win a club. EKANA is already the cheapest custom supplier on the board, and it still lost Carabanchel on price. The price cannot go lower without eating the margin, so the discount goes: the price is what it is, and what makes it worth paying is a website and a season of posts nobody else quotes for at all.
Reduce
- Breadth of catalogue. From the full package on request down to the handful of pieces a club at this level actually wears. Fewer designs, fewer sizes, one simple run at the factory. It is not what pays for the website: what pays for the website is one template set, built once and recoloured, so the second club costs a colour change. The catalogue cut is what keeps production simple enough for three people to run.
Raise
- Money back to the club. One sponsor place, ready-made and priced: the business's name goes on the shirt, on the rebuilt website and in the season's posts, and it pays the club directly, not us. We build the page and set the price. The president sells it to a business he already knows, because door-to-door selling in Spanish is not work three people with day jobs can promise, so the money arrives if he sells it and not before.
Create
- A website and a season of posts, inside the kit deal. No supplier offers this at any price: the club's website rebuilt in its own colours with the store inside it, a season of ready-made posts its own volunteer sends out, and its badge redrawn so it survives being printed large. An agency would do the same job and charge more than the club's whole budget. We build it before he signs, from one template set recoloured per club, and the only supplier who could copy it is one that designs in-house on founders' hours instead of buying it in.
How the cuts pay for the additions
What we add is design time on one template set, built once and recoloured club by club, so the second club costs a colour change rather than a build. It is hours rather than cash, which is why we can spend it before a president has agreed to anything.
Cutting the catalogue does not pay for those hours; what it buys is a production side simple enough for three people to run. The room comes from the discount: what we used to hand over in price to win a club stays in the deal instead, and whether that covers the hours is one of the things the first two clubs settle.
Nothing here needs new money or a new hire. The honest limits are two. The club that wants its tracksuits, polos and bags as well is not this deal.
And because we build a club's website and posts before it signs, we do it only for clubs whose current supplier deal runs out this window, which is a list Nader already has, and not for anyone who takes a meeting.
The three tests
Focus
The value curve concentrates on a limited set of factors.
Passes Three points sit at the top of the scale and one on the floor, and that is the whole direction. At the top: the club's own website and posts inside the deal, which no supplier offers at all; the money that goes back to the club through one sponsor page; and fully custom design, which is where EKANA already stood.
On the floor: the breadth of the catalogue, cut below where EKANA is today. Everything else is held, including the price, which stops being discounted. Against EKANA today two of the eleven long-standing factors move, one up and one down, and one factor is added that was not on the board before.
The club store also rises, because the new website carries it, but that is catching up with what every other supplier already does, so it is not one of the four actions. Neither is showing the finished work before anyone pays, which is a rule this business holds to whichever direction wins.
Divergence
The curve's shape stands apart from the industry's average curve.
Passes Every rival group climbs on the brand name and on the catalogue. This line sits on the floor of both: the catalogue drops below EKANA today, and the brand name stays where EKANA already is, below all three of them. No group offers a club its own website and posts inside the kit deal at all, and this line goes to the top of the scale on it.
Money back to the club is the one long-standing factor where it rises above every group. The price does not move, and that matters: a line that sat a notch above the specialists everywhere, or a notch below them on price, would be a better version of the same shape.
This one is on the floor where the industry is high and at the ceiling where the industry is flat.
A compelling tagline
The strategy can be stated in a short, honest tagline that speaks to buyers.
Your club, looking like a real club, without paying more.
Passes It names what the president gets and what it costs him, and both are true on the picture: his club's own website and posts at the top of the scale, his price unchanged.
The question a sceptic asks first is who pays for it, and the answer is on the page: our design hours, spent once on a template set, and one page the club sells to a local business, whose money goes to the club and not to us.