Today, the line every direction must beat

The situation

EKANA makes fully custom sublimated kit in Egypt and sells it to lower-division clubs and academies in Madrid at a lower price than the other custom specialists. Terms are flexible, the design is the club's own, and the founders know the clubs.

The lead time is four weeks or more, the same as the specialists; small reorders take as long as the batch; there is one payment method and no club store.

What we saw

• On the canvas EKANA's line sits on top of the specialists' line, only cheaper and without a shop. That is the price-war zone.
• The brands' line is the mirror image: high on everything a president can show, the badge, perceived quality, the full package, the store; low on custom design and flexible terms.
• The only rows where EKANA scores high, fully custom design and flexible terms, the specialists share.
• A club we pitched this year, Carabanchel, went elsewhere on price, and we were already the cheapest custom supplier on the canvas.

What we sell today

• A kit designed for the club and sublimated in Egypt: not a catalogue shirt with a badge pressed on it.
• A sample the club sees and approves before the batch is made.
• Terms agreed deal by deal, with more room to move than a brand or a shop will give.
• Anything beyond the match kit on request, made specially rather than picked off a range.
• Four weeks or more from order to delivery, and a replacement takes the same again.
• No club shop, and one way of paying.

What already works

• The price gets us into the room. EKANA is the cheapest custom kit a club in Madrid can buy, and for a club at this level that is enough to be worth a meeting.
• Nader knows these clubs personally and talks to them every week. At this level that relationship is worth more than anything on the list above.
• Clubs that want their own identity rather than someone else's badge do notice the design freedom, and they say so.
• Nothing has to be fixed before any of this works. It already runs, and it already makes money in Egypt.

Why staying put does not win

• A new club has no reason to switch. Every custom specialist offers a design of the club's own and terms it can argue about, so the cheapest one wins the year and the next cheapest wins the next.
• The things that make a club unhappy with its supplier, the wait, the boxes, the replacement that takes weeks, the batch that comes out worse than the sample, are the same at EKANA as anywhere else.
• The things a president can show off, a badge and a shop, are exactly where EKANA is lowest.
• Price cannot go lower without eating the margin, and it did not win Carabanchel.

Who buys

The club president, as for every supplier; he compares price, quality and delivery and signs.

Who pays

Families, through whatever store the club has, or the club itself; EKANA today has no store of its own.

What better would look like

Better custom kits, a sharper price, faster delivery, and the store and the full package caught up to what everyone else offers. That is what a supplier does when it wants to compete harder in the same market.

It raises five things at once and gives up nothing to pay for any of them, so the whole cost comes out of the margin. It moves on exactly the things every rival already competes on, so a president gets no new reason to choose EKANA beyond our word that we do it better. And it needs the factory to be faster, which nobody has agreed to.

It is the same line as today, one notch higher, which is the trap this whole exercise exists to avoid. It is not a direction. It is the reference every direction has to beat, and if none of them does, then carrying on as we are, with more discipline, is the honest answer.