Nice Niche! November feat. Queensland Football Club

When I think niche, I don’t necessarily think of some long, strategic play in the market, on the oath to dominance. Sometimes, spontaneity and ingenuity and good brand building collide to surface something truly unique. Cue, one of my favourite brands (with a touch of the right amount of absurdity) going around at the moment: Queensland Football Club.

Queensland Football Club is not a real sports team and has never been.

That’s what makes this super fast rising fashion brand so fun, unique, niche and cool in my opinion. https://queenslandfc.com/

Combining high quality fashion taste, excellence in design, lots of humour, a great back-story and what appears to be a legion of people really connecting with the brand thanks to the open approach from QFC Founder Ken Sakata to engage via social platforms, and engage often.

Ken Sakata is a Doctor actually, primarily working in elective surgery and started QFC as a bit of a lark.

Originally using social media as a platform to push satirical content where Ken took his audience on a journey as he set in motion a completely fabricated journey to leave behind his existing career to become a professional footballer.

Now, this might be hard for a lot of people to understand on linkedin of all the platforms, as satire often doesn’t exist on this platform, but as Ken’s posts grew in popularity and more and more people came along for the ride, a few posts he made posing with official Australian Football League merch ended up getting noticed, and served with a cease and desist!

But, that’s the best thing that could have happened, as it then set in motion the launch of the next action in Ken’s ingenuity: launching Queensland Football Club as a completely made-up club, with full fashion capsules that quickly began to sell out, and now, it’s a legitimately scaling operation that is being shared and spoken about in locations outside of Australia even!

I think for me personally, hearing this story, it surfaced a couple of things for me:

Being such a fan of American sports, especially NFL and NBA, I have long taken note of the incredible design aesthetic across a range of mediums for each and every team. And then I look at the design aesthetics used by the local AFL and NRL, and I cry a little and die a bit inside, every time. It is poor, and the design game in the local games needs to change and improve, stat.

And Ken is showing exactly what fashionable, good design looks like.

Also, I love how Ken opens himself up via social platforms to present directly to camera about the process they are using on each and every garment. The fabric they utilise is sourced from Japan currently, so the care and attention being put into the capsules themselves is something that I really resonate with.

There is not fast fast scale happening here. But no-one said that every single brand building exercise had to be that, and I like this curated, methodical, slower approach.

There’s a lot of care, humour and thoughtful consideration pumped into this brand via Ken, and all power to him and his team behind the scenes. It’s a strong strong niche, and I’ll happily tell anyone within earshot all about it!

I'm intent on interviewing Ken at some stage soon on either a podcast or at an event. If anyone wants to do that with me, just sing out!

In the meantime, you can listen to his fantastic interview with Aunty Donna's Broden Kelly on his 'The Footy'; podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/77ff8MBaaNIxNpfirBDLUI?si=328c3bc4ddad4706

Hail Queensland Football Club!!

Check out their Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/queensland.fc/

Nice Niche! November:

November 3rd - TRASH ROBOT

November 2nd - Float

November 1st - Purpose Conference