Pride and passion
THE concept came to Nick Laird and Joe Passmore in a pub. Unlike most great ideas conceived in bars, however, this one survived.
“I designed a T-shirt for the Celtic Bar in Tyrone in 2003,” recalls Laird. “It worked out well, and I did one for the same bar in 2005, using the Gooch. We got national press coverage because there was a high design element and we decided to bring it one stage further.”
Laird and Passmore got involved with Club Tyrone, the support organisation for Tyrone’s inter-county teams, doing their design work, and they also started designing match programmes, winning a McNamee Award this year.
“We wanted to bring humour into the design, a bit of funkiness,” says Laird of Squareball. “We worked on the idea for two years before launching it in May. The feedback’s been very good and, while we weren’t going to go down the retail route, retailers have been very keen to stock our products — it’s just gone into the Quills shops in Cork and Kerry, for instance.”
It’s a big move for Squareball, given its base is in the North. The company has fed off the GAA renaissance in Ulster, as Laird explains.
“Talking from a Tyrone perspective, the GAA buzz has taken hold phenomenally. We work on the Club Tyrone summer camps, and between one in three and one in four kids in the county between eight and 12 attended a Club Tyrone summer camp in the past couple of years. You see the kids walking around in their Club Tyrone gear and it’s heartwarming.
“We wanted to give something back to the GAA, and all I had to give were design skills. Club Tyrone has been hugely successful and design skills have played a part in that.”
Laird is keen to point out that while Squareball has a commercial aspect to it, when people log on to the website, they can see there’s more to it than just selling clothes. Attitude plays a part.
“We’re trying to put a little style into the thing — Quiksilver, the surf-wear company, would be an organisation we studied. That cultural aspect to a sport is something that interested us. People can be proud of our T-shirts but they’re not in your face — they won’t alienate other people but they’ll see that the person is a GAA follower.
“We wanted our gear to be as good as Firetrap or Diesel. If a GAA fan hands over €30, they should get something worth €30. If you pay hard-earned cash, you should get something of value for it. The website gives people information about us; there’s a shop where you can buy the gear, and a pitch-finder where people can find venues — and the best pint, the best bag of chips, parking and so on. It’s a fan-orientated section of the site. We have five venues done now but we aim to get them all up on the site.”
As Laird says, they’re keen on feedback.
“We’re not trying to dictate to fans what they want. We want to take their comments on board and mould Squareball according to their needs. We’re developing hats and scarves and so on for the national league, and we want to see Squareball as a major brand in five years’ time. We’re putting a lot of time and money into this, and we don’t see it as a short-term project.”
Meanwhile, fans of TOFFS — The Old-Fashioned Football Shirt company — now have a GAA equivalent. Retrogaa.com, founded by Brian Quinn, now supplies classic old GAA jerseys. If you want to show off a ’30s Kilkenny jersey or an ’80s Dublin top, that’s your port of call.
“I played for Down,” says Quinn, “And I always liked the 1960 jersey but you couldn’t find it anymore. I’d heard of TOFFS and, talking to friends, GAA people, they were saying the same, that they’d like an old jersey.”
Quinn mobilised his contacts and did his research.
“My brother’s in the fashion trade and knew the people who could get a few samples done, which got a good reaction. Then, in last year’s championship, we carried out a survey of GAA fans at big games, with 10 questions, but the crucial question was: would you consider purchasing an old-style jersey?
“That got a very positive reaction. Then we had some professional market research done, which also came back with positive results. We decided to start off with six jerseys last year, and we’ve built it up from there. Now we’re trying to cover all the different counties, but we’ve only been live on the website since March.”
The reaction’s been good, and Quinn feels the plain, old-style jerseys are tapping into a nostalgia factor being driven by programmes like All-Ireland Gold on TG4.
“Then you have the history behind the jerseys,” says Quinn, “Growing up in the ’70s, you’d be familiar with the great Dublin and Kerry jerseys, for instance.
“We hope to cover 24 of the 32 counties before the end of the year — at this stage it’s more a question of what we don’t do rather than what we do. There’s a lot of interest from the counties which are going well — the likes of Dublin and Cork — and then you have people who are interested in particular players, or really obscure jerseys. We could get a call from someone who wants a replica of the Sligo 1971 jersey their uncle wore, for instance.
“The older jerseys are also getting a lot of interest, like the Kilkenny 1933 jersey — I love those old, button-neck jerseys. Everyone has their own favourites, and often it’s not even their own county jersey. Take the 1921 Dublin jersey: they beat Mayo in that game and Sean Lavin of that team was the first man to introduce the solo run to Gaelic football.”
And the future for Retrogaa?
“At the moment we want to concentrate on providing a solid service,” says Quinn, “Part of that is offering some of the history behind some of the jerseys.
“However, we’re also getting plenty of enquiries from people asking why we don’t have a Roscommon jersey from the ’80s or whatever, and we’re trying to cope with all of that.
“While we’re trying to roll this out, we want to keep the jerseys authentic, and of a good quality. There’s a good level of interest now and we’re hoping to keep it high.”
*log on to retrogaa.com or squareball.com for more information.
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