Direction B
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 lineWe dress your team. We gather your town.
The four actions
Eliminate
- The box in somebody's living room. Every existing way a small club sells clothing puts a carton in a volunteer's hall cupboard and makes somebody count cash. Here the club never orders, holds, counts or sells stock, and nobody at the club ever handles money. Each design opens as a pre-order, the run is made once the pre-orders cover it, and whatever is left sits on our shelf in Madrid.
Reduce
- The range. One dated, numbered collection a season, a few pieces, never made again. A wide range that misses leaves stock nobody buys; a small collection made after pre-orders does not.
- What the club has to run. It approves the designs and takes its cut, and it never orders, holds, sells or counts anything. What is left is one thing and it is not optional: one named person sends out what we make, every week of the season. A club that cannot name that person in the first meeting does not get signed.
Raise
- How the clothing is cut. Carolina cuts and styles it as street clothing rather than as kit, because a piece nobody wants to wear will not carry a town. It does not have to beat a streetwear label; it has to be good enough that nobody is embarrassed to wear it.
- Money back to the club. A cut on every piece the town buys, landing automatically on our store. It is money the club does not receive today and does not have to count, chase or bank itself.
Create
- The campaign that gathers the town. The relationship every supplier has with a club ends when the boxes arrive. This one starts there. The campaign is built on one question asked twice: kids watching a big team get its new shirts ask ¿y si ascendemos?, and the same kids at their own club ask ¿y nosotros?. We make the films, the posts and the small games, in one batch before the season. One named person at the club sends them out.
- Clothing the town can wear. Rep your hood, through the club. No brand, chain, shop or supplier sells a town's own small club as clothing for the street. A shop can copy a design in a week, and one already sells its own town's name; what it cannot get is the club's permission, the club's channel, and a rail with things on it that are not for sale.
- A shirt you cannot buy. It marks something that actually happened and says so on the shirt: the season you were at fifteen matches, the promotion you were there for. It is counted where a small club can actually count, on the club's own page, from a code on the matchday post that a fan taps from the stand. Made once, one run per design, alongside the collection.
- A season ticket worth holding. Every season ticket comes with a shirt nobody else can buy. These clubs sell almost none today, and that is the point of it rather than an objection to it: it is the first reason anybody has ever had to take one, the club keeps the membership money, and at today's numbers the shirts are a handful made inside a run that is happening anyway.
How the cuts pay for the additions
Three things make this affordable. The range is one small collection at a time, the club holds nothing, and each design is made once, in one ordinary run, and only after pre-orders cover it. So there is no batch made on hope and no box in anyone's living room.
That one run also carries the shirts that are not for sale, which is why they can be given away without a sponsor: they ride in a production that is happening anyway. What is left to pay for is Carolina's design time and Karim's campaign work, which we have, and the campaign is made once for the season rather than invented every week.
Two things in that arithmetic are not settled. Nobody has written down the smallest run our factory will make of one design, and that number is the whole of the go rule: pre-orders have to cover it inside the window or the run is not made.
And if covering it needs much more than a third of the club's own households, the collection is too big and gets cut rather than tested again.
The three tests
Focus
The value curve concentrates on a limited set of factors.
Passes Four points sit at or near the top of the scale and they are one idea in four parts: the campaign that gathers the town, clothing the town can wear, a shirt that is not for sale, and a season ticket worth holding. Everything the trade actually competes on is left where it is.
Price, delivery, quality, catalogue breadth and the club's page do not move, or move to where the trade already sits. What it gives up is real and a reader can see it: the range, and everything the club would normally have to run, hold and count.
Divergence
The curve's shape stands apart from the industry's average curve.
Passes Across the eleven things the kit trade competes on, this line sits where EKANA already sits and makes no claim at all. Then it leaves the field: on the four columns at the right every supplier group sits at the bottom of the scale, or one step above it where a single local shop sells its own town's name, and this line is alone above them.
That is the shape the book asks for, and it is the shape of the argument too. We are not trying to be a better kit supplier.
A compelling tagline
The strategy can be stated in a short, honest tagline that speaks to buyers.
We dress your team. We gather your town.
Passes Two verbs. The first is what every supplier does and what we already do well, so it costs the president nothing to believe. The second is what nobody does, and it is the whole direction. Both halves are on the canvas: the kit line unchanged, and the campaign at the top of the scale where the trade is on the floor.