Brand recognition in football isn’t just limited to kit design really is it? It’s down to a few factors including success and other aspects of the brand like badges, stadiums and club stature. As drew has mentioned. Variety keeps the sales up. Because of the base we’ve set ourselves of changing design if you keep stripes for 3 years plus then chances are you drop off sales. Besides, if you look through our kit history there’s a pretty even split on stripes and solid colours. My comment about success was a bit tongue in cheek. I’m aware it probably doesn’t affect success just more a funny observation to keep things light hearted. Our brand will be more effected by results on the pitch than the patterns on a kit. I would argue there’s an equally niche set of fans that know us for the tiger stripes kit but that would be just as anecdotal as the Brazilians that you’re referencing
I don't remember people getting worked up about our kit changing from Plain to stripes and back again 25 years ago . It seems to be a recent thing and the least of our worries I'd say
Kit review, courtesy of Les... https://hullcitykits.co.uk/2025/07/...gpsgAzvR8rcBhdVYe__aem_IEAwUW_1PA7TdCPNAppSgg
I actually noticed that the socks were a different shade of amber than the shirt on Tuesday (before the shirts were soaked in sweat). Turns out they were using last season’s third kit socks. I still think this season’s home kit would look better with black socks.
All of that is fine, but it's been our identity to rotate between stripes and plain for most of our existence. Sticking with just stripes would be changing our identity. I think you could even make an argument that changing to always play in plain amber would be as appropriate as changing to always play in stripes. That's fine if that's what you want, I'm not going to argue against that preference, but I do think it's incorrect to say that stripes are our historic identity and that rotating with plain is messing with that. The Raich Carter era kit was plain, the Waggy era kit was plain, the Wembley 08 kit was plain.
I never said that our historic identity has always been stripes. I started going to Boothferry Park during the amazing 65/66 season when we had plain shirts, we also had plain shirts in the almost-but-not-quite Terry Neill 70/71 season. Personally I would have preferred us in stripes, as that's how our story began, and I believe that has value. Pretty sure if we had played in stripes we'd have had equally successful seasons. My point is that, after 100 years of trying, we reached a worldwide audience in an iconic and unique striped kit, reflecting the nickname and attracting a lot of foreign fans whose interest was piqued by the kit and the nickname (admittedly also by results). Why would you choose to throw that away? Old man Allam became obsessed with reaching a global market when we already had a foot in the door - how many teams would kill for the uniqueness of black and amber stripes? At the risk of repeating myself, experimenting with stripes/plain/hoops/whatever smacks of a small-club mentality, which is kind of what we are I suppose. I just wish we'd aim a bit higher.
Fair enough, but I don't see much of a link between the choice of kit and the opportunity to capitalise on the global exposure of the Premier League. We threw it away by not being successful for long enough and not investing in anything meaningful in the long term, surely.
So our identity over 100 plus years was defined the day we reached the Cup final (assuming that’s what you mean by reaching a global audience)? It’s a point of view.
Bayern Munich have often swapped between plain red, red and white stripes, hoops even blue and red stripes. Wouldn't call them a small club without a global identity!
