Over the years, we have had the pleasure of interacting with a great number of enterprises and projects. From these diverse encounters we have realised something, you have a tremendously creative approach to business, not to mention your clothes2order designs. Behind ever customised -shirt or embroidered logo is a fascinating, unique and inspiring business.
While we think the designs you come up with are pretty amazing, it’s the stories behind them that are truly unique. That’s why we will be regularly featuring the stories of several of our customers so we can learn about their products, challenges and the journey that got them to where they are today.
Today, we will discuss the remarkable story of the Hackney Laces football and community club. Pictured here in their Clothes2order kit, we think they are a great example of the pride a uniform can instil in a team.
Hackney is an area lacking in sport and community based opportunities for young women. Realising that ladies football was one of the sports women couldn’t get involved in, Katee Hui was inspired to set up a community football club for girls aged 12 – 17 . A player herself, Katee was concerned about the high drop out rate for young girls in the sport and attributed it to a lack of funding for girls clubs.
Not afraid of a challenge, she partnered up with charity Reach Out and set about creating a community club to not only help young girls get involved in football, but also their community. The benefits to the girls stretch beyond new football skills too with Hackney Laces acting as a springboard inspiring them to take on other activities. A year on and the project is a resounding success! Regular attendees, summer residentials, matches and even the occasional visit from professional footballers.
I spoke to Katee about the challenges of the project and their fabulous new logo and kit ‘The hardest thing was knowing where to start and how to get organised‘. Katee tells us. ‘It’s a big undertaking and the things I worried lots about, like getting good numbers of girls turning up and finding a facility turned out to be quite easy, whereas the things I worried less about like how we describe ourselves to funders and sponsors was actually really hard‘.
Creating an innovative business model to maintain financial stability was a key concern. Grass roots football funding is as flawed as the debt ridden clubs in the premier leagues. Reliant on erratic grant funds, cash from local authorities and subs from players and fund-raisers, she was determined to find a different way community clubs could be financially buoyant. This different way was to run the Hackney Laces as a cooperative.
In Europe cooperative ownership is commonplace among top-flight clubs. In Germany, the Bundesliga clubs are large membership associations, owned and controlled by their fans. They are also the most profitable clubs in Europe with the highest attendances. So what does this mean for the Hackney Laces? Katee’s task was to explain that anyone can own part of the club while supporting grassroots football at the same time. As in the Bundesliga, members can get involved in helping with the club, making decisions, come watch the team play and more, and at the Hackney Laces, all for £10.
With 2012 being the official year of cooperative enterprises and the growing discontent about the way football, both professional and grass roots, is funded, the Hackney Laces should be on a road to success.
Kate is also a proponent about the importance of a uniform in instilling pride in the team. ‘The t-shirts make the girls confident.’ She cites the importance of a uniform as twofold, in part because they feel belonging to a team and something bigger ‘but also because of the message the t-shirt bears, in addition to the logo‘. Alongside their innovative logo, their Clothes2order t-shirts read ‘this is what a footballer looks like’. ‘They feel proud to wear them because often girls are given grief for playing footy‘.
Hackney Laces Logo
When choosing the design of the t-shirt, and in essence how the club was to be visually represented, Katee stressed the importance of getting the agreement of everyone involved. ‘We had a few iterations and lots of discussions as we went through the process. When Lucy revealed the final version, we all were like ‘That’s the one‘.
The logo chosen was designed pro bono, by graphic designer Lucy Groom and Naresh Ramchandani, a partner at Pentagram. The idea was to create something that was bold, strong and masculine, to offset the feminine sound of ‘laces’. ‘We wanted a badge that would look good on the kit and have some sort of reference to laces, like boot laces. The font she chose for the typeface on the logo is called ‘Knockout’ which we all felt was very appropriate.’
Here’s how it will look on various colours of kit.
Hackney Laces logo on different colours of kit
Inspired? We hope so!
