West Park Rovers 3. Your Club Shop Is a Factory
(You Just Don’t Admit It Yet)
Why we’re writing this
Most sports clubs outsource retail. A licensing partner runs the store, ships the orders, and pays a royalty. It works, but it keeps commerce at arm’s length.
More clubs are now questioning that setup. Not because they want to sell more products, but because they want more control. Over the fan experience. Over the data. Over how moments on the pitch turn into something fans can actually buy.
This series looks at what happens when clubs bring retail and e-commerce in-house, and what that decision really involves once you get past the headline business case.
We’re using West Park Rovers, the fictional club from Kieran Maguire’s The Price of Football, as our reference point. They’re a stand-in for any club trying to modernise how it sells to fans, from merchandise to collectibles.
If you haven’t read it yet, start with The Business Case, which explains why clubs are making this shift in the first place.
From here, we move into the reality of making it work.
Your Club Shop Is a Factory
Once a club decides to bring retail in-house, the instinct is to think in terms of channels.
A new website.
A better store.
More control over merchandising.
That’s understandable. It’s also misleading.
Because the moment you take ownership of retail, you’re no longer just running a shop. You’re running a production operation. A small one, but a real one.
Most clubs just don’t talk about it that way.
The illusion of a simple product
From the outside, sports merchandise looks straightforward.
A shirt.
A scarf.
A cap.
But the simplicity is created at the front end. Behind the scenes, the product breaks apart very quickly.
A personalised shirt is not a single item. It’s a collection of components that have to come together at the right moment, in the right order, using the right stock.
A blank shirt.
A league patch.
A competition badge.
A name block or individual letters.
Two numbers.
Sometimes a sleeve sponsor.
Each of those components has its own stock position, cost, supplier, and failure point.
Once retail moves in-house, the club becomes responsible for assembling that finished product every single time someone clicks “buy”.
That isn’t retail in the traditional sense. It’s assembly.
Every order is a production run
This is where clubs often underestimate what they’re taking on.
Personalisation is usually framed as a feature. Something marketing wants. Something the website needs to support.
Operationally, it’s the core workflow.
Every personalised order is a tiny production run. It consumes multiple components, requires manual handling, and results in a finished item that didn’t exist before the order was placed.
That has knock-on effects.
If you don’t track letters and numbers properly, you don’t know what you can sell tomorrow.
If you don’t understand capacity, delivery promises become guesswork.
If you don’t know where your bottlenecks are, you’ll find them during launch week.
For West Park Rovers, this realisation comes quickly. Shirt stock looks healthy. Patches are in place. Printing is ready.
They run out of a single letter.
Suddenly, paid orders are stuck. Not because the shirt isn’t available, but because the system never treated letters as real inventory.
That’s not a website problem. It’s a production one.
Signed merchandise changes the rules
Signed stock is where the factory reality becomes impossible to ignore.
From the outside, signed merchandise looks like easy margin. A signature turns a standard product into a premium one.
Behind the scenes, it requires planning.
Signed items aren’t usually built to order. They’re forecasted, assembled in advance, and held as finished goods. Components are reserved. Stock is reclassified. Work is scheduled.
At well-run clubs, signed merchandise follows a defined process:
Blank items are set aside
Signatures are collected in batches
Stock moves from unsigned to signed
Finished products are assembled
Items are sold as complete units
That’s manufacturing logic.
At West Park Rovers, the merchandising team quickly learns that signed stock introduces new questions. What happens if demand spikes unexpectedly? What happens if a player leaves? What happens if you commit too much stock too early?
Each decision affects availability, waste, and margin. And each decision needs to be made before the sale, not after it.
Work orders, whether you call them that or not
Most clubs already run work orders. They just don’t formalise them.
Someone decides how many signed items to prepare.
Someone decides when boxed sets should be assembled.
Someone decides which components get used now and which are held back.
Those are production decisions.
As volumes increase, informal processes stop scaling. Memory fails. Spreadsheets drift. Errors compound.
This is usually the moment clubs realise why basic retail tooling isn’t enough. Once you’re assembling products from components, you need systems that understand work in progress, consumption, and finished goods.
Not because it’s “enterprise”. Because it’s practical.
Why outsourcing hides this reality
Licensing partners insulate clubs from all of this.
They flatten complexity. They make retail feel predictable. The club signs off designs and campaigns, and the operational risk lives elsewhere.
What gets lost is understanding.
Clubs never see how fragile the system really is.
They never learn which components drive profit.
They never feel where the pressure builds.
When West Park Rovers starts modelling the operation themselves, they notice something immediately. The highest-margin products are also the most operationally complex.
Personalisation.
Signed items.
Limited assemblies.
All things that require a production mindset.
The uncomfortable shift
Calling a club shop a factory doesn’t feel right at first.
Factories sound industrial. Clubs see themselves as cultural institutions. Communities. Brands.
But ignoring the reality doesn’t remove the responsibility.
Once retail is in-house, the club owns:
Component stock accuracy
Assembly processes
Capacity constraints
Quality control
Errors and rework
Waste
Those are operational concerns, whether the club likes the language or not.
At West Park Rovers, the shift shows up in meetings. Conversations move away from collections and campaigns, and towards availability, timing, and flow.
That’s not a loss of creativity. It’s a sign the operation is maturing.
Why this matters
The business case focused on margin and control. This part is about confidence.
When a club understands that its shop is a factory, it starts designing it properly.
It stops overcommitting to player names.
It stops gambling on transfers.
It stops hoping launch week will go smoothly.
Instead, it builds systems that can absorb demand, respond to moments, and recover from mistakes.
That’s where the real advantage sits.
Not in selling more products, but in being able to act without breaking things.
What West Park Rovers learn
By the end of this phase, West Park Rovers haven’t just launched a store.
They’ve built a production line. Small, imperfect, and human. But real.
And for the first time, they understand what bringing retail in-house actually means.
It isn’t about selling shirts.
It’s about accepting what the club already is, and choosing to run it properly.