Chris Heck - President of Business Operations

[The Edge]

Tbf to him, we don’t have overview of what he’s working on so I don’t think we can write him off just yet.

Maybe in the background he’s negotiating a break with Castore and a massive new deal with Nike. We don’t know.

We're unlikely to get a massive deal with anyone for  kits unless we start selling an awful lot more, or increase the price of a jersey to £125 a pop.

Don't give him ideas

That's kind of my point though. Be careful what you wish for when it comes to kit deals. We're only worth a certain amount and it's probably not that much, comparatively speaking.

Compared to clubs like Man U with a worldwide glory hunting network we're pretty small. Like my mate once told a bluenose "We are a behemoth. You're just a moth"

I saw figures the other day for 2022 that said we sold 245k shirts that year. Man U sold 2.5 million.

Newcastle, West Ham, and even Everton sold nearly 2x what we did.

It's something the club has got to address. This is where Heck comes in. He needs to be careful not to piss off the the Villa faithful in the process though. He hasn't made a good start on that front.

[AV84]

We need to get Taylor Swift to have a disgustingly public relationship with one of our players

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/27/1201992668/taylor-swifts-travis-kelce-jersey-sales

[Percy McCarthy]

Tbf to him, we don’t have overview of what he’s working on so I don’t think we can write him off just yet.

Maybe in the background he’s negotiating a break with Castore and a massive new deal with Nike. We don’t know.

We're unlikely to get a massive deal with anyone for  kits unless we start selling an awful lot more, or increase the price of a jersey to £125 a pop.

Don't give him ideas

That's kind of my point though. Be careful what you wish for when it comes to kit deals. We're only worth a certain amount and it's probably not that much, comparatively speaking.

Compared to clubs like Man U with a worldwide glory hunting network we're pretty small. Like my mate once told a bluenose "We are a behemoth. You're just a moth"

I say to them ‘we’re an icon, you’re an ex-con’.

But the ones I know like it.

[Des Little]

Surely our shirt sales are hindered by our distribution (or lack of it). Only being able to buy via the club directly, with dreadful stock levels must be a barrier.

[eamonn]

Do WHAM! and Everton have bigger fanbases ?

[astonvilla82]

Surely our shirt sales are hindered by our distribution (or lack of it). Only being able to buy via the club directly, with dreadful stock levels must be a barrier.

I ordered a baby's kit from the online store and after 4 weeks it hadn't arrived and they refunded the money straight away, so it makes you wonder if it's a on going problem

[LeeB]

And this is the thing, if we were with Nike or Adidas you could order one off their website and it would be in your hands the next day

[astonvilla82]

 

We need to get Taylor Swift to have a disgustingly public relationship with one of our players

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/27/1201992668/taylor-swifts-travis-kelce-jersey-sales

if you start that kind of thing every club will be doing it, good example is the mob down the road having a relationship with the cast from Peaky Blinders inders

[AV84]

Do WHAM! and Everton have bigger fanbases ?

I've no idea but they sold about 450k each that year. Maybe it's a one off for that year and they don't usually sell that many, I don't know.

West Ham qualifying for Europe probably helped with their sales. Sometimes a club signing a big name player, or someone from a particular country, will drive up shirt sales. Not saying we should go and sign a South Korean player just to push up sales, but there are a lot of ways sales can be increased.

[Drummond]

Do WHAM! and Everton have bigger fanbases ?

I've no idea but they sold about 450k each that year. Maybe it's a one off for that year and they don't usually sell that many, I don't know.

West Ham qualifying for Europe probably helped with their sales. Sometimes a club signing a big name player, or someone from a particular country, will drive up shirt sales. Not saying we should go and sign a South Korean player just to push up sales, but there are a lot of ways sales can be increased.

Making them not shit would be a start.

[AV84]

Do WHAM! and Everton have bigger fanbases ?

I've no idea but they sold about 450k each that year. Maybe it's a one off for that year and they don't usually sell that many, I don't know.

West Ham qualifying for Europe probably helped with their sales. Sometimes a club signing a big name player, or someone from a particular country, will drive up shirt sales. Not saying we should go and sign a South Korean player just to push up sales, but there are a lot of ways sales can be increased.

Making them not shit would be a start.

Well yes, less shit in design and quality, and more readily available seem the two most obvious places to start.

I'm no expert on it but I could see us changing suppliers but it'll be a small enough fee we'll get, with the aim being we drive up sales over the period of the deal and get a bigger one next time.

Edit - just looking at those shirt sales again and Man U sales were up 44% on the previous year because of Ronaldo 7 shirts.
Chelsea increased 22% after winning the Champions League.
Man City's sales were up 19% thanks to Grealish and Haaland shirt sales.

[chrisw1]

I think a less shit design is an eminently sensible starting point.  This stuff is easy isn't it?

[Duncan Shaw]

Honestly, if he did a Q and A for an hour on here, it would give him enough of a sensible "to-do" list to keep his team going for the next 12 months.

I see the Villa on Tour guys tweeted about the empty seats yesterday and someone tagged him in the replies, so it will be interesting to see if he takes any notice of that at all.

[LeeB]

I think a less shit design is an eminently sensible starting point.  This stuff is easy isn't it?

You'd think so Chris, but then their answer to "How do we make more money from fans who just want to be able to buy some refreshments, and are literally begging us to help them part with their cash?" is to make it even harder to do so for the majority whilst fleecing a select and stupid few much harder.

[AV84]

Honestly, if he did a Q and A for an hour on here, it would give him enough of a sensible "to-do" list to keep his team going for the next 12 months.

I think it's a bit disingenuous to suggest he doesn't know these very basic points about business. Especially when it comes to something as basic as shirt sales. I get why people are annoyed about the way things have happened at the stadium, but the man's not an idiot.