Sam, thanks for your thoughts.
We have several potential European partners including a Champions League winner, but the problem is here, not there. In order to make any deal worthwhile, we would have to fund their coaches to visit with our coaches and players. One coach will cost us approx TT$12,000 per week including flights, accommodation, meals etc. Even if we held a coaching clinic and charged $200, we would need 600 kids and that won't happen! We have been trying to get sponsorship, but no one seems interested. One of the main aims of a coaching clinic would be to filter the top 30 or 40 kids so they can get real benefit, but that takes quite a bit of filtering! It should not depend on their ability to pay.
We are the only Pro League team (aside from T&TEC perhaps) who do not receive government funding which is shocking when you see how much emphasis we put on Football in the Community compared to those clubs who receive up to $83,000 p.m. from Ministry of Sport.
Every penny we spend is generated by us...but we'll keep pushing for the subvention. Some weeks we struggle in training as we don't have enough footballs. We have just had to purchase 75 uniforms for the youth teams which we sourced in India. We make our own ice in plastic bags in a freezer and bought a second hand washing machine to cut costs. Even playing in the F.A. Trophy final is a financial strain as there is no prize money. We asked TTFF if we could put out sponsors perimeter boards but they said no, so even if we win the cup, we're out of pocket!
Regarding selling merchandise, we will be sellling to order from our website which is coming soon. Again, the problem is capital outlay. Just stocking a jersey means we actually need to hold up to 6 as we don't know which size a client would want - s, m, l, xl, xxl or kids sizes. It's worse with T shirts as we've found that women want a different style neckline etc, so we'd need up to 12 in stock to accommodate one sale. Our jerseys are only available from USA so we have shipping and taxes as well as printing to add to the purchase cost. We did investigate using a local brand, but the quality wasn't good and it was evident that people preferred a brand name. So we cannot afford to buy stock in advance that may sit there for 6 months.
I love the Sharks name. It's really caught on here. It may be a bit NFL, but we need to inject some kind of excitement into the club branding. It's more relevant than Caledonia being called Stallions and Joe Public being known as Lions. The whole marketing and promotional opportunity that goes with the nickname includes a kids story about Sharkie, there will be Baby Shark merchandise and of course, The Sharkettes.
It may not be traditional football fare, but trust me, traditional does not work here!!
Hope that helps a little!
