On the first Friday of February this year, thirty six elite Aussie Rules players ran onto the field at Melbourne’s Ikon Park, officially kicking off the inaugural AFL Women’s competition.
Despite an expectation the competition would need at least three years from its launch to realise its full potential, as the Carlton and Collingwood AFLW teams took to the ground for the first match, it was evident footy fans and the wider community had a different idea.
The game was a lock out with 24,000 people turning up to cheer from the stands and even more turned away. Close to a million viewers tuned in to watch the match from their loungerooms. The AFLW, and the 176 female athletes who make up the competition, had already struck a chord.
In the rounds since, the groundswell of support from both footy fans and the wider community has been monumental. It has demonstrated an appetite from spectators to support an elite, all female competition and has seen a new breed of role models emerge for young girls to look up to. In just eight weeks, the AFLW league has exceeded all targets and all expectations, proving it can well and truly hold its own.
For the Cotton On Group, the overwhelming success of the AFLW’s launch and inaugural season has been truly exciting to witness and humbling to be part of. As a proud Australian business, aligning ourselves with one of the country’s most iconic sporting competitions is an opportunity we have passionately pursued.
In October 2016, our high-performance wear brand Cotton On Active Wear (COAR) was just one year old when it became the official apparel partner of the AFL Women’s competition. It was different ground for us, but here we had the chance to shape the look and the feel of a new sports league while supporting a break through competition showcasing women at the top of their game.
Empowering women is a cause close to our heart. With 77 per cent of our 20,000 team members being female and a similar percentage of our customers being women and young girls, supporting women is ingrained in every aspect of our business. Put simply, women are vital to our success. We make it a priority therefore to find opportunities where we can make a positive, meaningful difference in supporting females to be the best that they can be.
It was this ethos, alongside our ‘customer-first’ approach, that shaped the development process of the AFL Women’s on-field apparel. The players became our customer – we needed to understand their expectations and respond accordingly. As a result, our design team worked directly with players Daisy Pearce, Lauren Arnell and Aasta O’Connor to fuse the fashion aesthetic synonymous with the Cotton On brand with their needs as elite athletes. The objective was not to retro-fit the men’s uniform, but rather create a range designed for women, by women.
The result are uniforms reflecting the heritage of the AFL clubs the players represent, whilst embracing the unique requirements of the women wearing them. Innovative technology and fabrications have been integrated to deliver a high performance product designed for optimal performance whilst ensuring a comfortable fit that compliments the female form.
It has been hugely gratifying for the COAR team and indeed the wider business to see the players proudly sporting their team colours each week and know we’ve played a role in bringing it to life. Equally gratifying has been the reaction of the fans to the supporter wear. All of the merchandise has sold strongly, if not sold out completely which is a testament to the changing role of active wear as a staple in our everyday wardrobe.
Our partnership with the AFLW has been truly rewarding for the Cotton On Group and our people. It represents our strength as a grass roots business that wants to make a difference in the communities where we operate. We’re proud to be part of the AFL Women’s family and can’t wait to see what the future holds for the competition. Bring on the 2018 season.
Have you considered leveraging your community connections to reach your customers, or taken a leap of faith on a partnership that had little to no commercial history?