Direction A
Does it work
Nothing here is settled. When the family meets to decide, anyone who disagrees with a verdict says so and we change it.
The four questions it has to answer
Does a club actually want this?
Passes Proven, as far as anything here is proven. A president's only way to look like a serious club is to buy a big brand's name, and clubs already pay the highest price on the table to do it. That is the want, and it is paid for in cash every season.
This direction gives him the same feeling from his own club's identity, at the price he pays today, and shows it to him before he has committed to anything. He gets three things at once: his club looks real, nothing is paid before it is seen, and the volunteer who runs the club's social channels is handed something he can post.
Objection to expect
A president may treat the website and the posts as a favour he can take or leave rather than a reason to sign. The answer is that he already pays extra for a big brand's name, which is the same want; the test with one club settles it.
Would enough clubs pay this price?
Passes The safest of the four questions, because nothing about the price changes. The club pays what it pays today: the same band as the custom specialists, at its cheap end, below the local shop and far below the brands.
There is no patent and no exclusive asset behind any of this, and where nothing protects an offer from being copied the sensible place to price is low, which is where EKANA already is. What does change is that the price stops drifting down deal by deal: the design work is not added to the kit price, and the discount is not offered to win the club.
Objection to expect
The comparison that matters is not other kit suppliers but what a club would otherwise spend to look real, an agency, and that sits far above. The risk is the opposite one, leaving money on the table, which is the right risk for a first move.
Can we make it at that price and still earn?
Passes Reasoned, not yet measured, and the reasoning is short. The kit costs what it costs: same factory, same batch. The design work costs hours, not cash, and the hours are spent once: one website template and one set of social posts, built once and recoloured for each club.
The people are Karim and Carolina, who are already here, so there is no hire to pay for.
The real cost is the work done before a signature, a website and a season of posts for a club that can still say no, and that is bounded by a rule rather than by luck: it is offered to clubs whose current supplier deal runs out this window, a list Nader already has. The claim to check is that the second club costs a fraction of the first.
Objection to expect
If a club wants its site or its posts to be different from the template, the hours grow and this becomes bespoke work for ten clubs, which three people cannot carry. The rule is that the template is the product; a club that wants more than the template is not this deal.
What would stop a club saying yes?
Passes Four people could say no, and three of them are answered before we start. The president has to believe a kit supplier can do this at all, which is why he sees the finished work before he commits.
A local business will ask whether the club is really behind the sponsor offer, which is why the club sells it after signing and we never approach a business first. The factory is not asked to do anything new.
The fourth is us: doing this for several clubs at once is only survivable as templates the club runs itself, so the templates are built so that is the only way they can be used.
Objection to expect
The volunteer who is supposed to post from the templates may not. If the club's channels stay dead, the posts look like a promise we did not keep. The first club test names that person before we build, and the rhythm goes into the deal: one post before each match, one after.
Price and cost
Price position relative to the market
Three things we make every idea pass
- Clearly different. As far as it has been checked.
- No kit supplier gives a club its own website and a season of posts inside the deal; that row is flat at the bottom for all four groups on the canvas.
- What has not been checked is whether anyone outside the kit trade already does it, a web agency working with a club or a supplier in another country, and the sponsor page is the half most likely to exist somewhere already.
- Nobody has looked, and that search is the one thing still owed to this page.
- Several problems at once. It removes the president's problem of a club that does not look serious, the dead website, the volunteer's blank social feed and the risk of paying before seeing, with one signature.
- Simple for five clubs. As long as the template is the product.
- The website and the posts are one template set in five colourways; the club's own people run the channels; nothing is built per club by hand.
Does it contradict itself
None found The highest promise is a website and a season of posts inside the deal at no extra price. What delivers it is templates and our own hours, which we have, and a page the club sells to a business it already knows, which costs us nothing. The promise and the means match. Two things could break it.
One is if this became a service we run for each club, which is why running the club's channels is on the list of what is not in the package. The other is not a contradiction but a discipline: a direction that stops discounting has to hold the price when a president asks for one, and nothing but our own resolve holds it.
What it needs from us
Karim builds the website and social template set once and produces each club's version from it. Carolina designs the kit and redraws the badges. Nader brings the clubs he already talks to and sets the deadline and the sample sign-off with each president. No new hire.
Where the idea came from, and what we would do next
The ideas that went into this direction
- Making design fast and painless is worth raising, but only stacked with something that closes the deal; here it is stacked with proof before signing.
- Fully custom design is a factor where EKANA already stands with the specialists alone, so it is kept where it is, not raised further.
- Fast mock-ups with Carolina and design tools are the workflow that builds the website and the templates.
- Rebuilding the club's old website is the entry offer, delivered as a template in the club's colours with the kit deal inside.
- The club store with the club's cut landing automatically is brought up to industry standard inside the new website.
- A website the club's people can be proud of is one of the three things the club gets beyond the kit.
- Building the club's page and shirt mock-ups before the first meeting, so the president sees his club finished before paying, is the opener.
- Sponsor places on the shirt, the website and the templates become one page the club sells to a local business after signing, so no business is approached before the club is in.
- The package around the kit, website and store, is what a club needs before and after the kit itself.
- The club image idea, EKANA making a small club look like a pro club, is the origin of this direction, narrowed to what templates can carry.
- Delivering one elite element with the burden removed, a proper website and a polished first impression shown finished before commitment, is the mechanism this direction uses.
- A big brand's name on the shirt is standing borrowed from somebody else; the club's own website and posts, inside the kit deal and paid for the way kit is paid for, replace it.
- Clubs trade up for a big brand's name and down for their own design; this direction offers both at once.
- The page is sold by the club to a business it knows after it signs, not sponsor places sold by us before the club has agreed.
- Serving ten clubs at once only works if the club runs the templates itself, so the package is built that way.
- The June workshop's foot in the door, rebuilding a club's website with design tools and showing the finished product first, is this direction's opener.
- Building the club a professional online store and quietly redoing the rest of the site and its brand guidelines as a bonus is what this direction hands over.
Ideas it leaves out, and why
- EKANA setting up and running the club's own online store for its members. Running ten clubs' stores is a service, not a template; the store is brought to industry standard inside the website and the club's people operate it.
- Building and running the club's registration and sign-up flow. Enrolment is a permanent service a club could never leave, and it puts three people on the critical path of every club's admin.
- A simple assistant on the club's website that answers members' questions from the club's own information. It has to stay simple across several clubs' information at once, and nobody has sized that maintenance.
- Free kit for the coaches, the people members look at all day. Cheap and sensible, but somebody has to pay for it and nobody has priced it; it can be added to any direction later without changing the direction.
- A storefront where the club never buys stock and every sale pays the club a cut. Every channel already runs this; it is the plumbing under the store, not a difference, and it depends on production changes this direction does not make.
- Dressing the whole club, down to the youngest teams, in a complete pro-style package. The want behind it is a child's: Madrid and Barcelona already dress their youth like professionals, and a kid at a small club feels the difference. That is real, and it is the strongest argument this list has against itself. The cut still stands, for reasons that have nothing to do with whether the want is real: every supplier already sells a complete package, so it is catching up rather than a difference, and every added garment is more sizes to hold against the simplicity this direction lives by. What the child gets instead is his own club's badge on a kit designed for it, and a club that looks like a real club everywhere people look at it.
- Designing a package that sets EKANA apart, with a long list of possible components. The package is this direction; the longer list, the assistant, registration, influencers and gym seeding, is left out on purpose to keep it simple.
What we would test with real clubs before committing
One president, the whole deal on the table
- Who
- One club president Nader already talks to, at the level this direction targets.
- What we ask
- Offer him next season's kit deal with his website rebuilt and the social templates ready, all inside it at his current kit price, with the website and the kit designs on the table at the meeting and a produced sample of his own kit before any deposit, and ask him to sign.
- When
- Clubs start listening to a new supplier around the end of November and deals close by late March, so the material has to be finished by late November 2026 and the answer comes inside that window.
- What we would learn
- He signs at the price, with the website and the posts in the deal and no discount asked for. Interest without a signature, a request for a discount, or a request that we pay for the design work, counts as a no.
One local business, and the page the club would sell it
- Who
- A business near that club that the president already knows, with the president in the room or on the call.
- What we ask
- Show the page the club would sell it: a named place on the shirt, the website and the posts for a season, and ask what the business would pay for it.
- When
- Alongside the first test, once the president has said yes.
- What we would learn
- A business names a figure it would pay. Polite interest without a figure counts as inconclusive.
Who posts
- Who
- The first club that signs.
- What we ask
- Name, before we build, the person at the club who will fill in the social templates, and write the rhythm into the deal: one post before each match, one after, and the set pieces of the season.
- When
- At the signing meeting.
- What we would learn
- A named person, the rhythm written into the deal, and posts appearing every week of the first month of the season.