Everton keen to extend global commercial reach with business partners

Everton’s kit maker and retail partner are working on plans to extend the club’s global commercial reach.

Danish kit maker hummel began providing the Blues with kit and training gear in a deal announced in May 2020, believed to be worth £9m a year for the club.

The Goodison Park club has worked with Fanatics for 12 years. Fanatics already has an international reach, being key partner of the NFL, NBA, The Ryder Cup, England Rugby and several top football clubs in the Premier League, and across Europe such as Real Madrid, Borussia Dortmund and Atletico Madrid.

Now, Everton, hummel and Fanatics are working on ways to reach even more fans of the Premier League side across the world.

This pre-season, the club took part in the Florida Cup competition in America, which provided the opportunity to build stronger relationships with the USA fan base.

Filip Trulsson, hummel’s chief brand officer, said: “For us, the US market is extremely important, and we have got good representation there, so we are constantly fine-tuning and working with the club and Fanatics to improve distribution and tap-in to opportunities.

“One of the programmes we introduced last season was to work with the affiliated US supporters’ groups to see how, through a hummel foundation product programme, we can service them.

“By engaging with the club’s fan engagement team and the supporters’ clubs themselves, we have provided them with their own range of merchandise, directly through hummel, that showcases their own brands.

“The supporters’ clubs were really keen on having their own identity that supports Everton and associates them with hummel. With supporters’ clubs now able to purchase these products directly through hummel, it means they don’t need to go and create white label products elsewhere.

“It has also been great to see and hear how passionate they are about their club, even though they live so far away. That was certainly evident again during Everton’s pre-season involvement in the Florida Cup and the supporters’ events in Orlando. It is very important for us and the club to build on that, really be accessible and close to those fan groups and learn from that.

“The US has been a good test for us, and it could be something we explore in other areas if there is an appetite for it.”

Danny Downs, UK general manager at Fanatics, explained how the company is working to establish a significant retail opportunity across the Atlantic, saying: “With the club’s efforts in North and South America, we have definitely seen the spark light across the Atlantic. Fanatics is a global company but our origins are in the US, so we have a natural position of strength in North America.

“We are about to roll out – we’re probably a month or two away now – some technology whereby our guys here in the UK can push all of our Everton digital catalogue into all of our US platforms.

“That includes our own platforms like Fanatics, FansEdge and Kitbag USA, but we also have strategic partnerships with the likes of Walmart, Kohl’s, JCPenney and Lids, so we can push the entire Everton range on to all their platforms.

“That gives Everton huge amounts of exposure, and Evertonians in North America greater access to every single product fans can get hold of here in the UK. At first that’s going to be fulfilled in the UK, so fans will still have to wait slightly longer, and shipping is going to be slightly more expensive, but these things take time and there is a lot of red tape to get through.

“We are going to test and learn and, as products become more popular, we will physically move those products into the local market. That will mean, as we move forward, nobody should be disadvantaged based on where they live.

He said there are plans to target fans in Asia, and closer to home in Ireland, too.

“In China we have created Fanatics China. For Everton, what that means is we will be providing a ‘China to China’ proposition.

“That’s important because a lot of European brands try to put a European product and a European mindset into China, and history shows that just doesn’t work. They want the products to say Everton on them and they still want the correct blues, the correct pantones and so on, but they want it to be done in a Chinese style.

“By creating this company in China, we’re going to take everything that’s essential to the Everton ethos and history but it’s going to get a Chinese twist on it, and we think that is going to be huge for fans in China.”

He added: “We have also got offices and distribution centres in Tokyo, Japan, we have a strategic retail alliance with Coupang, an online retailer in South Korea, and we also have a distribution affiliate based in Melbourne to take care of the Asia Pacific region.

“So, we think from the back end of this year and going into 2022 we are going to see some real results for our Asian fans. It will also allow the club to really engage with those fans and understand who they are, why they love Everton, and how they can create a relationship with them that’s beyond e-commerce and retail.”

He acknowledged the problems the Irish market currently faces through Brexit red tape, but said Fanatics is working to overcome these: “In Ireland, we’ve heard the desire of fans and have been in discussions with a leading national sports store about how we can get much more Everton product into their stores.

“Due to a number of complex political issues on both side of the Irish Sea, that might not happen straight away, but it is definitely going to be in place for next season.

“We are, however, working really hard to get as much product in their hands in the short term as well, because we know that is really important for our Irish Evertonians. Of course, that goes for fans in Northern Ireland as well and we are currently working on something that we hope they will be really pleased with. We will have more news on that in the coming months and we will share it with everyone as soon as we can.”

And he indicated that the club is planning to mark its upcoming move away from its Goodison Park stadium to a new £500m waterfront ground at Bramley-Moore Dock, where construction work began last month.

“I can’t help thinking about work starting on Bramley-Moore Dock and – I can’t give too many spoilers away – but we are already working with the club and hummel and thinking about how we create an appropriate send off for Goodison and then pivot into that new era on the banks of the Royal Blue Mersey, and how we can have an involvement in that.

“That is something I am really excited about in the long term but, the most important thing for us, is just to keep testing, learning, listening and expanding. We have some ambitious plans that are coming to fruition that will help make it easier for supporters to get their merchandise both in store and online.”