When Futsal Oz CEO and founder Peter Parthimos walked out of our humble AKU studio’s in the first week of September after an ad hoc meeting, I remember sitting in silence for an abnormal period of time with our Head Designer Kui and Manufacturing manager Minh. The project seemed simple on paper. A new and improved Series Futsal Australia format, building identities of 13 mens and womens teams representing 8 states, with 16 kit designs and manufacturing a total of almost 200 kits. That part wasn’t the issue, it was the fact that we needed these on our door step in 3.5 weeks. Some brands might happily slap a few logos and numbers on stock jersey’s sitting around in a box in a warehouse but at AKU, every kit we create is custom made, catered specifically for the team and can takes 4 weeks from when the design was finished, but in this case, we started with nothing. To add to the drama, was juggling the existing extensive list of orders at different stages of our design, ordering and manufacturing process. It was always going to be tight.
It was all hands on deck for our team of 9. Contrary to popular belief, with AKU only 2 years old, we all balance our AKU commitments with full time jobs. After some late nights in the office, endless pizza boxes and energy drinks later, a total of 8 logos and 16 kit designs completed in 3 days. Ask any graphic designer and they’ll tell you what an amazing achievement that is. For sizing, we stalked team photos of the clubs to guesstimate each single players sizes and eventually, the order was submitted to our factory. I can’t count the number of arguments and worst case hypotheticals I had with Minh, and I’m sure he wanted to punch me in the face at some points over the month. I even put him on the waiting list for a flight overseas to our manufacturer to hand pick up the kits himself. It wasn’t required and I remember hugging the boxes when I walked in to the studio when they had arrived. The final week was left to my marketing and creative team to pump out media for the event, and the guys did a great job with our own twist of kit reveals and release video.
The Series Futsal Australia event was a spectacle in itself and there was a special moment just sitting in the crowd, as some of Australia’s best players and international guests took the AKU branded court, wearing a brand created in my living room no more than 2 years ago. I could tell my team felt the same pride. We did it, and I thought we did it bloody well…
Ruz,
Resident AKU Stress head & Founder
