What It's About
A football fanatic creates an online marketplace to sell jersey kits. Goaaallllll!!!!
Words of Wisdom
Michael admits that using other people’s content to try to grow their Facebook following backfired, cautioning that, “You can't really hack it. Focus energy on the right things to build an authentic community. Stick with it and it will grow. If you try and hack it like us you might lose your audience.”
Fun Fact
Football (Soccer) is the world's most popular sport, played by over 250 million people in more than 200 countries with billions of fans in the world. How do you like that American football? (source)
Notes from Chris
Episode 1536
Growing up, Michael Maxwell and his friends loved football shirts. Again, here we’re talking the soccer kind of football. Michael loved the shirts’ designs, their look and feel, and most importantly how it reminded him of favorite players. Over the years, he and his friends built up quite a collection, buying shirts whenever they went on holiday and when there was a new release. But as they got older, they played less football, couldn't wear the shirts to work and their partners even banned them from wearing them out on a Saturday night. So, in defense—or was it offense??—Michael created the Football Shirt Collective (FSC), a place to celebrate those shirts. It started as an Instagram page and a Tumblr and grew into a blog where he interviewed footballers and famous people about their first shirts. They had a lot of memories attached to them. Everyone they spoke to had a story about their first shirt, where they got it, who got them it and what it meant to them. The Collective told those stories. Over time, it grew a large audience and became a marketplace selling vintage shirts, modern classics that were hard to get, and concept kits. For those who don’t know, a concept kit is a shirt inspired by an idea rather than a specific team. (More on that a little later.) In addition to reselling shirts, FSC also designs original shirts. They make these designs conceptual rather than based on a specific club, so there are no licensing issues. Even as much of the UK locked down during the pandemic, Michael says they’ve been able to ship and operate as usual. In fact, their sales have actually grown. Since losing their audience on Facebook, sales have gone up by around 200%. FSC now brings in roughly £1,500 or around $2,000 profit a month after taxes. Michael thinks people are buying more shirts as they can wear them when working from home and also because people are investing in products that mean more to them. Postal services have struggled due to all the increased e-commerce activity, so the FSC team has paid for more expensive services that are more reliable. Sounds like a worthy investment and a winning strategy.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Learn more about Michael and the Football Shirt Collective (FSC) at his website, footballshirtcollective.com.
- Nomad Scripts “Stories that Matter” for B Corps: After traveling the world, a college graduate works with B corporations to help them tell their stories.
- Designer Goes Viral with Playful T-Shirts; Earns $445,000: A freelance graphic designer turns his work research into a gold mine.
- Sophomores Stitch Together Custom T-Shirts: When two college students look to start a business, they roll up their sleeves and create a custom t-shirt company—totally off the cuff!
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Resources
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Quote of the Day
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