Update on the New Aston Villa Kit and Future Supplier

By
MOMS
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Aston Villa Kit Supplier Future

Aston Villa supporters can expect to get some insight into what is happening with the kit provider for the 2022/23 season with the Kappa deal in its final year, when the Villa Fan Consultation Group meets for an operations meeting with the club this week on Thursday (tomorrow).

The Kappa deal initially ran for two-years with a third year extension, which was taken up. Bearing in mind that the normal lead time for kit design means the following season’s design – in this case 2022/23 – would normally have been signed off in June, it’ll certainly be interesting to get an update on the current situation.

Villa’s 2021/22 season kit is expected to launch next week after the end of Euro 2020. The new home shirt was recently leaked on Footyheadlines, who have been reliable in the past giving advance heads-up. The presence of a model and tags in the photos certainly look legit.

While the barcode type design will be needed to be seen in the flesh, there’s no doubt the stripes will be symbolic in some sense to Villa history (no matter how tenuous!). With the new home shirt not offering too much of a departure from its predecessor, like last season, the away shirt is expected to be the better of the two designs.

The away shirt is expected to be for sale early August with the third shirt being available at the end of August.

Previous Kit Update

In case you missed the notes from the Villa Fan Consultation Group meeting with Villa CEO Christian Purslow, below is the section that was answered by the club outside the meeting to give us an update on the increased ordering to meet demand and release dates for other ranges.

Q. Kit Launch:  Are there any dates yet for the kit launch and is there a confidence of availability of sizes, and fixes to the quality issues, that have arisen for so many previous seasons launches?

The new training range will go on pre-order this week and be available in store mid-July.  The home kit will go on sale in mid-July, scheduled to coincide with the end of the Euros as the focus moves away from international football and back to club football.  The away kit will then follow a couple of weeks later in early August, with third kit in late August.

Regarding availability, we sold a record number of shirts in 20/21 and are not aware of any major issues on kit availability until Easter, which is to be expected in the annual cycle.  Through to Christmas availability ran at 95%+ and we then had further deliveries in Jan and Feb for the first time to top up stock levels.  Any other short term availability issues on certain sizes related to covid pushing demand online while the store was closed.  We have increased the level of shirts we have by a further 20% for the coming season to match the increasing demand.  There were availability issues on training range with some critical shortages – Fanatics acknowledged they under-brought in this area and so the number of units has doubled ahead of this season on those items.  Additionally, there will be an injection range in November and a new spring/summer collection is in development too. 

There have been no major quality issues reported on any technical product across playing teams, or retail, across the 20/21 range.  Retail returns relating to quality issues are at their lowest levels since Fanatics took over in 2017, which was the final year of the Under Armour partnership.  There have also been negligible returns relating to peeling.

UTV

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