NCFC Kit and Kit Manufacture.

[Branston Pickle 3,638]

I really don''t get this "why can''t we have Nike or Adidas" kits rubbish - I honestly couldn''t give two shlts who makes our kit so long as it is yellow and green, and that we preferably do well in it.

[Year of the tiger 54]

I was told years ago that another problem with having kits from the big two was supply. If we need 1000 extra shirts & Man U, Real need 100,000 pairs of shorts for the worldwide market who do you think will be first in the queue.

[Rogue Baboon 0]

Does it really matter?

Do people look at Ipswich and say ''oh look, they have shirts made by Adidas, what a great club''

Do they then look at Liverpool and say ''oh look, their shirts are made by New Balance, they aren''t exactly big compared to Adidas or Nike are they''

Has anybody got any evidence that Adidas or Nike kits are a better quality?

[Just Dan 10]

Rogue Baboon - it''s about perceived quality not actual quality. Because Manchesters Utd and City, Chelsea and Arsenal wear Nike and Adidas people think "oh, they are wearing it, it must be good quality". I am not saying it is not good quality, but it is certainly no better than Errea or New Balance.

[Lessingham Canary 99]

Rumour is 1p5wich are switching to French Connection UK, or FCUK to the tractor boys!

[andyc24_uk 59]

The one thing that the club really needs to change is the policy of only selling the kits through the club shop. There was a time when that made sense but at this point they''re really selling themselves short by not opening themselves up to potential fans worldwide.

I work abroad in the far east and travel around a bit and you see kids here wearing all sorts of club shirts - yes mostly United/City/Chelsea/Liverpool/Barca/Real but also West Ham or Sunderland or Newcastle shirts here and there as well. The Premier League is by far the biggest attraction on TV in Asia and all the clubs are well known - Norwich very much among them after our recent time in the top flight.

We have easily one of the most distinctive shirts in English football - noone else has anything remotely like our yellow and green - and if you mention Norwich to a casual fan in other parts of the world, that''s what they''ll invariably come up with - "Oh, Norwich... yellow shirts, right?". Virtually anyone you speak to has a generally favourable impression of the club too, we''re seen as a good team with passionate fans.

And yet, the club does absolutely nothing to engage with these audiences - we''re talking about millions of people here, far more overall than watch games in the UK.

There is a real opportunity here to market the Norwich brand much more successfully worldwide - and yet you can''t even buy a shirt in-store outside the city; let alone in China or Japan or Thailand. Yes, one can order from the website and pay a pretty exorbitant £20 international shipping fee; and yes I can see the argument that by keeping sales ''in house'' the club presumably keeps a larger cut of revenue - but that''s short term thinking, in the longer term there is far, far more to be gained from building up our fanbase worldwide and bringing in thousands of potential new fans (and their long-term spending power).

I don''t really care if our shirts are made by Errea or by one of the ''big boys'' but the club needs to wake up and realise the global potential that they''re missing out on, and get our shirts into retail stores around the world, just like our rivals who understand that it''s a global game do already.

[TIL 1010 4,722]

MWJ doesn''t want any of those foreigners getting their hands on our club so i am sure he will not want them wearing City shirts either. [:P]

[Essex_Canary 6]

Having spent a number of years worked in the teamwear industry for a number of years let me add my tuppence worth.

The club deliberately chooses not to make its products available to the wider sports retail market. It is one of the reasons we use a kit supplier like Errea and not Nike, Adidas or any of the Sports Direct/JD Sports owned brands.

By restricting the availability to the club controlled channels the club not only keep a larger proportion of the revenue, but they are also able to control the price that the shirts are sold at.

As an assumption, given the quantities ordered the Norwich shirt probably costs the club around £10-£15 each, although this doesnt take into account any gift of kit that Errea give the club for being kit supplier.

On the basis of £15 price, the club then sells through its own channels for £45 making £30 per shirt profit.

If Errea sold the shirts to retailers, at £22.50 each (£15 cost + £7.50 royalty to the club) and the retailer sold the shirts at £45 the club would make £7.50 per shirt and the retailer would pocket £22.50. If the retailer decided that it could live with only making £10 per shirt and decided to sell them at £32.50 each the club would still make £7.50 per shirt, but would also see sales through its own channels completely disappear - after all why would you buy from the club when Sports Direct (as an example) had it significantly cheaper.

As has been said before, the greatest demand for Norwich shirts comes from Norwich fans, and whilst the club maybe missing out on the odd sale through a retailer they are sales that a) don''t make the club much money anyway, and b) aren''t from the club''s traditional supporter base.

With Adidas, Nike, Puma through Genesis in the UK, or the likes of Cabrini, Mitre, Prostar or Sondico (and the other Pentland/JD Sports/Sports Direct owned brands) I would bet that their contracts are significantly geared towards the company making money by wider distribution - after all they sell the shirt at £15 whoever they sell it to.

The other element to consider is the value of the monetary and gift of kit element of the contracts in offer from the suppliers. Given our long term deal with Errea I suggest that the deal was significantly better than available elsewhere. Yes Errea will make a profit out of the deal, but it is likely that they do so at a rate of return that is below what the likes of Nike, Adidas, UA etc would be prepared to accept.

[Rogue Baboon 0]

Great knowledge there Essex Canary, it makes sense for us to control where the kits are sold in my opinion. At the end of the day we simply wouldn''t sell much more shirts if they were in Sports Direct than we do at the minute anyway

[wcorkcanary 4,329]

Dead right Essex, the likes of Errea and its sister Legea offer very good quality at exceptionally decent prices. A few years back i bought 120 complete Kits from them, socks, shorts, jersey and rain jacket at around £18 per set, they also agreed to supply top up sets, around 40 per year at the same price.O''Neills, an Irish sportswear company gave us TWICE the sponsorship/gift deal that the mighty Umbro offered......and made kits especially for us, with identical replacements for ''lost'' or damaged gear no problem. Something Umbro could not offer as they were really only selling off the peg, and once theyre gone , sorry.