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Tom Burwell - Interim CEO Podcast

Keith S30S said:
What risk? The lad posting on here is talking about us making a tonne of extra money. We are guaranteed shirt sales. To a laymen it looks a no brainer. If we only make half the sales of a normal season we'd still make more money.

The only person who thinks we'd be employing a team of sewing machine employees is you. You'd farm out literally everything out but the in-person club shop sales.
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Yes you’d farm it out but they still charge you, do you think they’d charge the same as Nike have it at? If it was so profitable St Pauli wouldn’t have sacked the idea off, Dortmund would still do it.

The rewards are huge but the risks are even more, you need to get stock levels perfect, you can’t just go back to a factory if a tops successful and say knock up another 10k next week to get us them in a month they’d laugh their heads off. In a perfect world aye it’s the dream but it’s also a nightmare we could lose millions. We won’t risk it imho.

If we made half the sales of the previous year we lose an absolute fortune, why would we buy half the amount? We’d have thousands of shirts losing money that’s terrible planning.
 
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FoldingStars said:
Yes you’d farm it out but they still charge you, do you think they’d charge the same as Nike have it at? If it was so profitable St Pauli wouldn’t have sacked the idea off, Dortmund would still do it.

The rewards are huge but the risks are even more, you need to get stock levels perfect, you can’t just go back to a factory if a tops successful and say knock up another 10k next week to get us them in a month they’d laugh their heads off. In a perfect world aye it’s the dream but it’s also a nightmare we could lose millions. We won’t risk it imho.

If we made half the sales of the previous year we lose an absolute fortune, why would we buy half the amount? We’d have thousands of shirts losing money that’s terrible planning.
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DH Gate make money out of manufacturing shirts, wrapping them, posting them from china for £15 a throw.

We're knocking shirts out at £60 a pop. That's the profit margins we're talking here.
 
Big Bellyingham said:
No but I’m guessing the club who have access to all sorts of data have already done that to establish that conclusion-doesn’t surprise surely ?
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We have around 38,000 season card holders and the population of Sunderland is between 280,000 to 350,000 depending on what is included ie authority boundary or metropolitan area.

So 1 in 10 having a season card does surprise me yes when we must have thousands of season card holders not from within the boundary of Sunderland.
 
Keith S30S said:
DH Gate make money out of manufacturing shirts, wrapping them, posting them from china for £15 a throw.

We're knocking shirts out at £60 a pop. That's the profit margins we're talking here.
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DH gate use slave Labour, don’t need R&D, copy designs and use fabrics that are a lesser quality.

The comparison is so bad as we couldn’t do anything DH Gate do, imagine top level athletes in a cheap knock off kit like you get on DH Gate man.

St Pauli created their own shirts, there’s a reason they’ve gone back to having a partnership, Barcelona who are looking behind every sofa for a cent looked into it and thought no chance. It’s not a business risk to take. The downsides are huge compared to the positives. Roland might work in the industry and St Pauli and Barcelona may have read it wrong but it won’t be easy or cheap and risk free for us to make our own gear.
 
FoldingStars said:
DH gate use slave Labour, don’t need R&D, copy designs and use fabrics that are a lesser quality.

The comparison is so bad as we couldn’t do anything DH Gate do, imagine top level athletes in a cheap knock off kit like you get on DH Gate man.

St Pauli created their own shirts, there’s a reason they’ve gone back to having a partnership, Barcelona who are looking behind every sofa for a cent looked into it and thought no chance. It’s not a business risk to take. The downsides are huge compared to the positives. Roland might work in the industry and St Pauli and Barcelona may have read it wrong but it won’t be easy or cheap and risk free for us to make our own gear.
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Design work is literally a few clicks of a mouse to an expert. DH Gate knock out very good copies, I've bought a few for my Grandson. We could certainly source a kit for less than £20 with bulk delivery costing next to nothing compared to individual postage.

We need to move on from the excellent hummel simply because it's not a Premier League deal. We should look at every avenue to get the best deal. Only a mug wouldn't.
 
What is the/a membership scheme that is being mentioned and causing distress?
Is it just for non SC holders to obtain match tickets?

Will it cost money to be a member?
 
Keith S30S said:
Design work is literally a few clicks of a mouse to an expert. DH Gate knock out very good copies, I've bought a few for my Grandson. We could certainly source a kit for less than £20 with bulk delivery costing next to nothing compared to individual postage.

We need to move on from the excellent hummel simply because it's not a Premier League deal. We should look at every avenue to get the best deal. Only a mug wouldn't.
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DH gate can not and should never be used as a comparison for a football club who you want to design and manufacture their own kit all be it farmed out. They have none of the overheads we would have, nobody is going to design a kit for a premier league club for a couple of quid, imagine the backlash if Sunderland farmed out the butchers apron kit, you’d be on here calling them worse than shite and that’s before we go a doggy DH Gate top that has the wrong badge on.
 
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FoldingStars said:
Yes you’d farm it out but they still charge you, do you think they’d charge the same as Nike have it at? If it was so profitable St Pauli wouldn’t have sacked the idea off, Dortmund would still do it.

The rewards are huge but the risks are even more, you need to get stock levels perfect, you can’t just go back to a factory if a tops successful and say knock up another 10k next week to get us them in a month they’d laugh their heads off. In a perfect world aye it’s the dream but it’s also a nightmare we could lose millions. We won’t risk it imho.

If we made half the sales of the previous year we lose an absolute fortune, why would we buy half the amount? We’d have thousands of shirts losing money that’s terrible planning.
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I’ve given an example in an earlier post on the financials. Would cost about £15 all in to get a replica shirt manufactured and into store. I’m talking top quality product here as well. The club would sell it for £65/£70.
At the moment the club get about £3 a shirt plus a one off fee of about £500k.

On ordering. You buy 20k shirts for start of season. You are 100% guaranteed to sell them. That’s the point I keep saying. It’s as guaranteed sales as you’re ever going to get.

You then can buy top ups throughout the season as sales data is generated. Standard S&OP process that every FMCG business does on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Leadtimes as little as 4 weeks. Minimium order quantities in the tens not thousands like big brands demand.

On the Barcelona example you mentioned in another comment. They were all set to do it themselves then Nike made them a ridiculous offer. Not sure if the fella from Zara was involved in some way helping with it?!? But I’ve also said if you get big enough it’s not worth it as brands will pay the big clubs fortunes. We will never be at that level. Or not for decades.
Barcelonas deal is worth over £1 BILLION !!!!
They got £100m lump sum at the start and then £100m per season on a 10 year deal I think it was. Plus a royalty. Absolutely no brianer to take that deal. You’ll never make that kind of money back and Nike only did it for the wider brand benefits it brings …. Not that I think a tick on a shirt brings in over £1bn of brand value mind !!
 
FoldingStars said:
DH gate can not and should never be used as a comparison for a football club who you want to design and manufacture their own kit all be it farmed out. They have none of the overheads we would have, nobody is going to design a kit for a premier league club for a couple of quid, imagine the backlash if Sunderland farmed out the butchers apron kit, you’d be on here calling them worse than shite and that’s before we go a doggy DH Gate top that has the wrong badge on.
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The lad has literally said we could have a vote on the kit of choice 😂

I was giving a ball park figure.

According to this it costs about a tenner to knock a shirt out.

You must be logged on to see external links
 
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Wearson said:
What is the/a membership scheme that is being mentioned and causing distress?
Is it just for non SC holders to obtain match tickets?

Will it cost money to be a member?
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The mags membership scheme has 2 tiers at £37 and £47 you need to be a member to go into the ballot to get home match tickets. You get discounts a few times a year for merchandise and other discounts on ground tours ect. It tells you all the details on the website it looks like we'll be going the same way
 
Wearson said:
What is the/a membership scheme that is being mentioned and causing distress?
Is it just for non SC holders to obtain match tickets?

Will it cost money to be a member?
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We don’t know yet.

A comparison might be Everton’s though. It’s £30 for the basic membership and £60 for the better one.

Without the membership I believe you can’t received transferred tickets (so I with a SC couldn’t transfer you having a membership).

And every non-sc match ticket goes to a ballot. The top tier gives you more chances than the £30 one.

The top tier gives you a higher chance of a season ticket as well (you have to be a member to be on the waiting list)

You do also receive a genuinely nice box with items like a key ring, deck of cards, some stickers, and a membership card. Which our lass has, and unironically is a nice touch and makes you feel part of the club a bit more then most clubs do.

The issue is that basically everyone has the top tier membership to get them there better chances in the ballot, which means that you don’t actually stand a much better chance then you would if it was just £30 for everyone - so the clubs making £30 off everyone for offering absolutely nowt :lol:
 
He's obviously impressive on the commercial side of things but strikes me as a man who is learning football as he goes and in the meantime landing some cliches such as "community" etc etc.

Wouldn't be surprised to see another exercise with consultants to tell them what it means to be a sunderland fan and inevitably coming up with some predictable patronizing nonsense about working class areas and appreciating hard work.

But make no mistake, he has a chance right now to fix some things with fans affected by commercial decisions re ticketing, such as not being allowed to "downgrade" and he's not doing it.

That is not a good sign.
 
im not roland rat said:
I’ve given an example in an earlier post on the financials. Would cost about £15 all in to get a replica shirt manufactured and into store. I’m talking top quality product here as well. The club would sell it for £65/£70.
At the moment the club get about £3 a shirt plus a one off fee of about £500k.

On ordering. You buy 20k shirts for start of season. You are 100% guaranteed to sell them. That’s the point I keep saying. It’s as guaranteed sales as you’re ever going to get.

You then can buy top ups throughout the season as sales data is generated. Standard S&OP process that every FMCG business does on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Leadtimes as little as 4 weeks. Minimium order quantities in the tens not thousands like big brands demand.

On the Barcelona example you mentioned in another comment. They were all set to do it themselves then Nike made them a ridiculous offer. Not sure if the fella from Zara was involved in some way helping with it?!? But I’ve also said if you get big enough it’s not worth it as brands will pay the big clubs fortunes. We will never be at that level. Or not for decades.
Barcelonas deal is worth over £1 BILLION !!!!
They got £100m lump sum at the start and then £100m per season on a 10 year deal I think it was. Plus a royalty. Absolutely no brianer to take that deal. You’ll never make that kind of money back and Nike only did it for the wider brand benefits it brings …. Not that I think a tick on a shirt brings in over £1bn of brand value mind !!
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I'm not doubting the first batch sells, we know the basic numbers, its the ones after that where the profit is at risk, you clearly know the manufacturing process so could Sunderland just call up the factory in Vietnam, China or Portugal and say make me another 1000 and get them here in 4 weeks and have them for £15. If you say we can order quantities in the tens then deadstock would never be an issue. Do the factories just have the machines waiting for any random order to appear?

I go back to the downsides as no other club have done it and stuck to it, St Pauli are the prime example, they have seen its either easier or more financially beneficial to go to Puma and stop doing it all themselves. The money in a perfect scenario looks huge but if we accept all the risks it only takes 1 issue and that profit is disappearing fast.

Looking at your figures wouldnt it be the more sensible business decision to let the sports brand design/R&D/manufacture the item, basically what they are experts at and then we buy at the price point Fanatics buy at, we then have much less risk and dont need to enter a market that even if we employed specialists we have no idea on and cut out the middleman and instead of seeing a possible £3 per shirt we see £30? If we then get this part right we can take that extra risk for the manufacturing side of it.
 
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