The 2025-26 season saw Thurston Football Club join ‘The Huddle’ with STC as their Kit Partner. Whilst it’s only been a few months that teams across their adult and youth sections have been pulling on their new shirts, shorts and socks, the partnership has opened up a long-term approach to generating valuable sponsorship along with reliable kit supply.
Having only recently stepped into the role of Chairperson, Rich Miles wanted to take the opportunity to look at the longer-term impact of having multiple kits across the club supplied by various providers and carrying a variety of different sponsors. Through discussions with the STC team, they were able to find the perfect solution which reduced waste, improved their environmental impact, generated important revenue, and developed a one-club ethos to what is one of Suffolk’s fastest growing grassroots football clubs.
“Our goal was clear,” said Rich. “We wanted to align the youth and adult sections of our club and having a single kit design was a major start. We were using a couple of suppliers but there were issues with each team doing their own thing.”
Rich’s son also plays rugby for a club who partner with STC and following an initial kit consultation some custom design concepts were presented, and it made complete sense to move their kit and teamwear supply to STC.
Like many clubs, each team needed to secure its own sponsor, and this caused Thurston some issues; none more so than the amount of wasted kit which could not be reused by other teams the following season as the players had grown out of it or moved on.
The solution – long term sponsorships with a handful of local companies which could then be used on all kits across the club. From the U7s through to the U15s, into the three weekend adult teams, and a new midweek social team which has been set up as a community programme to encourage more people to take up football for fun. This initiative now has twenty registered members wearing a new shirt available from the club’s online store which STC bult and manage, at no charge to the club.
The sponsor’s logos appear in a variety of positions across the shirts and shorts, and the club holds spare blank shirts should they need extra kit quickly.
“We have used a few different suppliers and just found STC very professional from start to finish. They had the best samples of kit and the quality of all the branding means logos stay clean and strong which helps maintain those key sponsor relations.
Whatever we need from STC, they are just on the end of an email or the phone. They truly believe in the quality of their product and service. Whenever we need to order top up items, they just make it easy for us. From initial designs through to playing in the kit, the process was only four weeks!”
I would 100% recommend them to any football club looking for a new kit partner.”
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