This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
In this story, a football shirt enthusiast turns his fashion passion into profits by tapping into the power of storytelling. It turns out that every football fan has a memory of their first shirt. What am I talking about here? I am talking about soccer, that kind of football, for our American listeners and anyone else who might be familiar with another kind of football. We're talking about the football also known as soccer, and that word storytelling, storytelling is a key component of many successful side hustles.
I started looking through the archives to find a couple of good examples to pull out for you. And I realized that at least a couple of times a week, what we're talking about here is successful in part because of the narrative the person has crafted or cultivated. In fact, we've even had a couple of people over the years who have turned storytelling itself into a business, including episode 916, 916, Nomad Scripts, Stories That Matter for B Corps, just to name one. So storytelling, super important. Also in this episode, you'll hear why a strategy of using other people's content to try to grow their Facebook page backfired.
Not a good idea, don't try this at home. In fact, in their case, they were quite innocent about it. They weren't trying to be malicious, but nevertheless, it backfired, put them in the penalty box. So don't try that at home, but do learn about storytelling. The story is called Fan Scores Big with Marketplace for Football Shirts.
That story is coming up after this quick message from our sponsor. [Music]
Growing up, Michael Maxwell and his friends loved football shirts. Again, here we're talking the soccer kind of football. Michael loved those shirts designs, their look and feel, and most importantly, how it reminded him of his 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, they couldn't wear the shirts to work. And worst of all, 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 beloved 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.
Turns out they had a lot of memories attached to them. Everyone they spoke to had a story about their first football shirt, where they got it, if someone bought it for them, and what it meant to them. The collective told those stories. Over time, it grew a large audience and eventually became a marketplace selling vintage shirts, as well as modern classics that were hard to get and concept kits. And for anybody who doesn't know, which included myself until about an hour ago, a concept kit is a shirt inspired by an idea rather than a specific team.
And we'll come back to that in a moment. The marketplace started as peer-to-peer, where individuals could sell each other their shirts. Essentially, it wasn't eBay, but just dedicated to football shirts. To kick off his new venture, Michael set up his e-commerce site on Shopify. By that point, he'd already built up a sizable email list, so he was able to make lots of sales on launch day.
He was vacationing in Spain at the time, so he celebrated with some tapas and a glass of sangria, as one does. People reached out to sell their collections directly to FSC. When there was a rare shirt, Michael purchased it to sell as his own collection. He also began to import hard-to-get shirts directly from teams. For instance, he just brought in this season's Venezia shirts from Italy and Fluminazzi shirts from Brazil, which are both considered modern classics.
But there are a lot of fake football shirts kicking around, so eventually, Michael found it was hard to ensure quality and a consistent level of customer service. He now works with a few trustworthy sellers who have large collections of shirts, and the website takes a commission of 10 to 20% from each transaction. At one point, the football shirt collective had grown to 100,000 Facebook followers with a verified blue check mark on their page. But Michael admits they fumbled the ball by posting video clips of special football moments that they didn't own the rights to. Others had posted the same clips, they were just kind of floating around, but Facebook took down the collective's account and revoked their verified status.
After getting that red card from Facebook, Michael and his team decided to focus their efforts on building back their community with original content that was more authentic for their audience. They've grown that audience to roughly 34,000 followers on Instagram, 15,000 on Twitter, and 5,000 on their mailing list. They've also focused more on optimizing content for search engines, which is a good lesson, never be dependent on any one network or source of traffic. In addition to reselling shirts, FSC also designs originals. They make these designs conceptual, that's that concept kit thing, rather than based on a specific club, so that there are no issues with licensing.
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%. And FSC now brings in roughly 1,500 pounds or around $2,000 in profit each month after tax. Michael thinks people are buying more shirts so they can wear them when working from home, and also from a sense of camaraderie.
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. It sounds like a worthy investment and a winning strategy. [Music]
We talked to Michael a bit about this Facebook issue. He says, well, he admits, concedes basically, that using other people's content to try to grow their Facebook following backfired on them. He said, you can't really hack it, focus energy on the right things to build an authentic community.
If you try to hack it, it might work for a time, but just like what happened with them, you eventually lose your audience, or some other negative consequence comes about, typically. But thankfully, they were able to rebuild. I do love the whole nostalgic camaraderie storytelling element to this concept of, what was your first football shirt? I've never owned a football shirt myself, but I guess if I acquired one, it would be my first and I would remember it, but I also didn't grow up in a culture where everybody around me was following this particular sport. So this could be true for other sports.
This could be true for other topics, other hobbies, activities, anything that has that sense of camaraderie, that sense of identity that people are finding through fashion in this case. And he also said, football shirts are really emotive. Everyone we spoke to had a story about that shirt, so we just told more and more stories about them. Storytelling, definitely a key to success. Michael, thank you so much for allowing us to share your story.
Congratulations, all the best to the Football Shirt Collective, FSC. I'll include links to that and everything else I mentioned in the episode at sidehustleschool.com/1543. That's 1-5-4-3. And listeners, don't forget, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Thank you for joining me today.
Be sure to do one thing, just one small thing to get closer to a goal you believe in. I'd love to feature your story here at some point. And until then, I'll keep cheering you on. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
