Two year football kits | PASOTI
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Two year football kits

I see Brentford have announced that they won't be changing their home shirt next season. I know this shouldn't really even be news but I think it's a good idea. Think the last time Argyle did this was early 2000s? I know the new shirt can be a money earner for the club but do fans really want a new home shirt every season?


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Jun 27, 2019
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I wonder if they would have done this if they were in League One? It's all very well for them to ditch annual kits now they're in the land of milk and honey, but I hope clubs like Argyle don't feel pressured to follow suit.

Nobody is forced to buy a kit every year, but making a change every two years will cut a portion of our income in half in one foul swoop. Unlike Brentford, we don't have a money tree growing in our back garden.
 
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Biggs

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The only positive of the kit every year is that it brings in Argyle more money. But I'm not sure it's right in any other way to have a whole set of new kit (plus training kit) every single year. And apart from anything else, it doesn't allow any shirt to 'breathe' and become iconic in any way.

Maybe you can stagger the releases, so each kit lasts two years but they're all released in alternate years. So you're always getting something to buy/Argyle have something to sell, but the shirts last longer.

Interesting debate (y)
 
Dec 30, 2020
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It’s quite an interesting economic problem.

If Argyle change their kit every couple of years and everybody else does it annually, we’re putting ourselves at a disadvantage in terms of our income streams.

But with literally every club now doing it annually, they’ve all seen revenue go up proportionally, meaning the fans still end up shell out more for kits without any club gaining any kind of advabtage. The increased revenue, I would imagine, is immediately eaten up by inflated player wages.

Perhaps something for the proposed new independent football regulator to look at.
 

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I think the sustainable/ carbon neutral option is a good one. Polyesters like plastics take years to decompose.
Maybe returning last year's shirt to be disposed/re used and getting a small saving on a new one could be a way forward.
 

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It’s quite an interesting economic problem.

If Argyle change their kit every couple of years and everybody else does it annually, we’re putting ourselves at a disadvantage in terms of our income streams.

Apart from the staggering release idea, maybe you can increase the quality of the shirt somehow.

Do we need replica shirts to be polyester? Maybe you can have a polyester player version for sport, but a cotton version for leisurewear. Or have all the sponsors etc sewn in like the retro shirts.

Would certainly improve the smell at HP, nothing brings out BO like a polyester football shirt :sick:
 

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Well, I will be buying my shirt only when I am too fat for the previous one or when one of the kiblings starts to grow and wants a new shirt. I know, folk don't need to buy a shirt if they don't want to and I am in that camp but putting out a new shirt each year is pretty poor and smacks of money rather than anything else but then again footy is now all about the money so lets put out a 2 new shirts a year and if you think that's crazy and money grabbing, so was the idea of annual shirt releases a few years back.
 
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It's a very cynical industry. You used to be able to buy 'mini kits' (the whole strip as a bundle) for up to about 7-year-old kids, but that's gradually been getting younger because they want you to buy each item separately as the margin is greater.

Puma's sizing is also grossly out of whack with reality. My 7-year-old wears 9-10 Argyle kits and my 12-year-old is now in Adult Small. They're both average height and average build, but Puma want kids to be 'adults' as quickly as possible to they can charge more.

That said, I still support Argyle releasing a new set of kits each year because it boosts the bottom line and I ultimately have a choice not to buy them.
 
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I like the idea of staggering the launches, as Biggs suggests. So new home shirt one season, new away shirt the next. That way, there's always something new each season if people want it but it's also means that you're not out of date after a year if you bought the other shirt.

Given they've had 3 new launches the past couple of seasons, it'd be interesting to know how many shirts Argyle have to flog off cheaply or donate to charity at the end of the season to make way for new stock? I imagine they'll have got better at judging demand as certain sizes don't tend to run out very quickly.

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Puma's sizing is also grossly out of whack with reality. My 7-year-old wears 9-10 Argyle kits and my 12-year-old is now in Adult Small. They're both average height and average build, but Puma want kids to be 'adults' as quickly as possible to they can charge more.

That is a very good point and something I hadn't thought about before. You're totally correct about the sizing (my normal size would look like body paint) and making kids wear adult sizes is a good reason for them to make the sizing smaller.
 
Dec 3, 2005
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I am sure many Parents would love to see the Argyle kits move to two years, these kits are expensive to most people and when you have children who want the latest kit, some familys will be forking out hundreds of pounds.
Plus like the article says - it will be less carbon.
Also the fact you have to wait for two years, MIGHT increase the sales!
Personally I hate the constant changing off the kit, at the end of the day the home kit will be a green shirt, why pay out over £40 for different trimmings?
 
Feb 28, 2016
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I remember a point raised at the time clubs started doing the annual new kit against doing it was it could, cost the club sales at Christmas how many parents are going to fork out for their kid to have the latest shirt at Christmas if it will be out of date in four months time?

It also led to away strips in a array of god awful colours not linked at all with the clubs (most clubs) history or traditions. I also agree it means you don’t get iconic shirts.

The home/away alternate is surly the best way and is how it was done when I was a boy getting those shirts off of relatives for birthdays and Christmases. For this to work though as mentioned the quality needs to vastly improve. I think bar the awful ironed on Ginsters logo, the TFG (Thinking in particular the one we won promotion to the Championship with and had for our first season up there IIRC,) shirts were our last quality made ones, made in the UK. The terrible Puma ones are I believe made in Turkey.
 

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I think it should new home and away shirts in alternate years. I think sales would only drop marginally overall, if at all. It just feels wrong on environmental grounds and fan exploitation to change all the shirts every season. I'd like to see more natural materials in products for sale, e.g. cotton used to replace polyester in replica shirts, wool in jumpers, etc.
 
Jan 11, 2016
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Just out of interest do we know how much total profit the club makes out of the sales of replica shirts per season.