Direction C
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 lineThe kit sorted, nothing to chase
The four actions
Eliminate
- The volunteer's guess. The club orders what families ordered plus a spares allowance we set together; over-ordering and the dead stock it leaves disappear.
- Sorting and storing kit at the club. Packs arrive made up per child, on one day; nobody stores boxes at home.
Reduce
- Breadth of catalogue. From the full package on request down to the pieces in the pack. Fewer pieces means fewer sizes in the spares box, which is what pays for keeping the box at all.
- The number of separate factory runs a club's season needs. Today it is a batch plus whatever gets reordered through the year, and a small run is the most expensive way anything gets made and needs its own shipment. Here it is one batch plus, at most, one grouped top-up.
Raise
- Small orders and replacements. The spares box in Madrid turns a single replacement or a late registration from weeks into days, while it lasts.
Create
- A pack per child, one delivery. The bag carries the child's name and the shirt inside is the club's own shirt, which is what lets a spare replace it. The club is delivered together on one agreed day and collected on the first training day. It is the one thing on this picture that no football kit supplier was found to offer across Spain, Britain, Germany, Ireland, Italy or Portugal — the closest real match anywhere is a school-uniform maker in the Gulf, for a different sport and a different market. And it is copyable: any supplier who decided to run it this way could match it within a season, because this is an operations change, not a capability only EKANA has.
How the cuts pay for the additions
The guess, the sorting and the loose reorders are what the old way cost: dead stock in the last year of a design, a child without a shirt in March, a volunteer's evenings. Removing them costs nothing; it is one shipment instead of several, and packing done at the factory where labour is cheap.
What we add costs a little: a few extra units per size in the batch, a shelf in Madrid, and a sample made before any money moves. That small cost fits inside today's price, so nothing here depends on a production model we do not have.
Two rules are what make that true rather than hopeful: the child's name goes on the bag and not into the shirt, so nothing in the box is tied to one child, and the box is run down rather than topped up in the last season of a design. The honest limit: the spares box is finite, and a top-up beyond it takes the factory's normal weeks.
The honest scope: this changes how the kit reaches the child, not what EKANA is or who it sells to. It is an operational fix, not a new market, and it is worth doing anyway, because ready now and copyable later beats a bigger idea that is not ready at all.
The three tests
Focus
The value curve concentrates on a limited set of factors.
Passes One point is entirely new — a pack per child with one delivery, which no supplier group offers at all — and it sits at the top of the scale beside fully custom design, where EKANA already stood.
Small orders rise to the specialists' own level and no further, and the order page rises to what the industry already offers, because the sizes have to be collected somewhere.
Brand prestige stays at the floor, because a big name on the shirt is not this direction's business, and the catalogue is cut below where EKANA is today, which is what pays for the spares box. Delivery speed does not move at all, because nothing here is faster, which is why it is not among the four actions.
Against EKANA today, one factor is new, two rise, one falls and the rest hold still: one peak, one cut, and a line that is otherwise the same line. That is what a focused move looks like, and it is also why this direction lives or dies on whether the one peak is worth paying for.
Divergence
The curve's shape stands apart from the industry's average curve.
Passes Every group is flat on a pack per child with one delivery, and this line goes to the top of the scale on it. Where the specialists are strong, the catalogue, this line goes below them and below EKANA today. Where the industry fights hardest, price and delivery speed, this line does not move at all.
That is the shape: it does not try to be a better specialist, it moves the work off the club. The German online makers sell speed and single pieces, so a line that had raised delivery would have been competing with them on their own ground; this one does not.
A compelling tagline
The strategy can be stated in a short, honest tagline that speaks to buyers.
The kit sorted, nothing to chase.
Passes It promises the volunteer's year, not a shirt in a day. Every word is on the canvas: the pack per child, the one delivery, the spares box. It does not promise a lower price, a big name on the shirt, or a shirt in a day, none of which this line claims.