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Saints To Produce Their Own Kit For 2014/15 Season
Tuesday, 1st Jul 2014 09:14

Saints have announced that the team kit for the coming season will be manufactured independently for the club rather than have a major brand name manufacturer.

This is not a new move for Saints, they produced their own kit from 1999 till 2008 when Umbro became the official supplier, back then though the reasoning behind producing their own kit was financial, under the deal with Pony of the £40 cost of the shirt, £5 was manufacturing costs, another £5 profit for the manufacturer, £10 royalty fee to the club and then £20 was profit to the retailer.

This meant that if a shirt was sold say in JD Sports, Saints would receive only £10, whereas with taking it in house and selling only from their club shop they could increase profit to £35 per shirt.

In 2008 however with the club heading to stormy waters financially, they could not afford to risk the outlay to do this, so it was easier to strike up a deal with Umbro to manufacture the kit, Saints still kept it in house sales wise so still retained the lions share of the profit.

Umbro proved good partners for the club and were supportive as we went in administration, however for last season Nicola Cortese struck up a deal with Adidas.

Whoever did the negotiation with this deal did not do their job well and Saints ended up with a poor design which was off the peg and identical in many ways to the strips of half the Premier league not to mention other League clubs.

The price was also off putting for what would become one of the poorest selling shirts in recent years, Saints retailed in at £49.99 whist most Premier clubs with the identical styled Adidas kit charged £44.99, with Bristol City who themselves had an almost identical shirt to Saints retailed theirs at only £39.99, put bluntly the supporters felt ripped off.

In December our ex Chairman had fallen out with Adidas and the deal was terminated, however when he left St Mary's and Katharina Liebherr's people took over they found one problem they had to deal with was the fact that there was no kit supplier for the 2014/15 season.

Negotiations with Adidas were opened and although these went well and Adidas were now happy to work with Saints again, the problem was timescales, for a company the size of Adidas, you could not just put in a major contract into the schedules and fulfill it in such a short time, therefore for this season Saints were forced to look elsewhere.

Therefore we are back to producing our own kit, this does not mean we have opened a sweat shop in St Mary's, what we have done is engage someone to design the kit and then found a company to manufacture it, there are plenty of those around as anyone who has watched lower league or parks football will tell you, but rather than wear the logo of one of these companies, Saints have chosen to give an air of independence by using their own brand again.

Just what the design will be we wait with baited breath, Imlead to understand that the club are aware that the last two kits did not represent the heritage of the club, that they did not make the shirt stand out, but rather blended us in with the pack, that being the case a return to stripes may be on the cards, but again Im lead to believe that this might not be possible for this season.

So Saints have got their kit back literally and hopefully now we will not revert to kits that look more at home at Anfield or Nottingham Forest.

Photo: Action Images



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ItchenNorth added 09:41 - Jul 1
The main problem with not securing a kit deal with a decent manufacturer is the quality of the build, the tailoring and the technology that goes into their products. If past attempts at ‘in house’ are anything to go on we may be wishing we had just stuck with the off the peg Adidas deal for one more year to afford us 12 months to secure a decent contact somewhere else for 2015/16. This year’s kits were not that bad, certainly the black away strip was one of the smartest designs I can remember in a long while. Top manufactures invest a lot of time and money in developing their range so even ‘off the peg’ designs although not unique will be better quality than ‘in house’. After all it’s not about what Joe Bloggs thinks it’s like to wear down the pub; it’s about professionals playing sport in it ! Let just hope the Saints board have a trick up their sleeve but you have to question; why don’t other top Premiership clubs do this !
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law101 added 10:06 - Jul 1
Well its obvious the club where forced into this decision somewhat. however I agree with Nick and ItchenNorth to an extent. The away kit was very striking and looked very good in my opinion. The home kit however was a poor fit, a horrible shade of red and the aap3 logo was a particularly tacky gold colour. Not that it really mattered to us fans but the navy training kit also looked like building site high vis. This seasons kit could also be hit or miss but whatever the result at least it will be original.
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kchick242 added 10:21 - Jul 1
Hopefully we will.be surprised by the quality of the kit. Let's not forget the club is in a.far better financial state then when we last produced our own kit and I would image katarina and her people have lot of contacts she is a very astute business woman how owns a lot of companies,andvif it makes more money for the club all the better it is.
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saintmark1976 added 10:50 - Jul 1
To be honest do the fans bother with who makes the kit? Some how I doubt it.

In my opinion bearing in mind that we appear to be in the process of having the heart ripped out of the team, now would be a good time to revert back to red and white stripes.

Man Utd and Liverpool play in red. Chelsea in blue. Spurs in white and Saints should revert back to their tradition. Bring back the stripes please!
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CovSaint added 12:25 - Jul 1
I agree that we should return to stripes. I always thought it was a shame last season, when we had Adidas, who did some super traditional striped kits for Sunderland, Stoke, West Brom and Hull City - but didn't do so for us - for whatever reason.
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BoondockSaint added 13:55 - Jul 1
Agree with CovSaint. Not only did Adidas do good striped work for other teams-they were able to get their crest in colour stitching and we got stuck with cheap one-colour stamps! There must be a penny pinching story behind that.

I for one didn't like the away strip not only it didn't incorporate our traditional away colours, it looked like an idea Everton cast off.

Give us our stripes back and watch the sales go up. I still have my money waiting-I was looking forward to getting the Prem shirt when we got promoted, and then when they came out, I didn't buy-I didn't want people to think I was a Laugherpool supporter.
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slynch added 14:52 - Jul 1
"Saints to Produce their Own Kit" - they've had to cos so many have gone missing!
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