Craig Buglass designed Arsenal’s “Invincibles” kit and the dazzling yellow Nike shirt that Brazil were wearing when they lifted the 2002 World Cup.
But the highlight of his career? Working as an adviser with Adidas on the designs that will relaunch Newcastle United’s partnership with the sportswear giant.
Buglass, a diehard Newcastle fan who has 30 years of experience working with some of the biggest kit brands, was called in to advise Adidas on designs ahead of a 7 June launch that is eagerly anticipated – both on Tyneside and at the brand’s HQ in London.
Success will ultimately be measured in pounds and pence – especially with concerns around profitability and sustainability regulations (PSR) weighing heavily on the club – but sources have told i to be prepared for something “iconic” to usher in Adidas’ Newcastle comeback.
As one of the few who have seen all three kit designs Buglass is suitably excited.
“I’ve just turned 50 and advising them on it – wow, it was a ‘my life is complete’ sort of moment,” he tells i over a Zoom call from Dubai, where he is launching a new gym brand.
“I think the fans will be really impressed. It’s out of this world what they’ve done with the kits, it’s absolutely class. I can’t say too much because I’m bound by NDAs but the fans will absolutely love it.
“If you look at how Everton have put things on their shirts and they’re all different, that’s the approach we’ve managed to get them to do as well. I think it’s going to be an absolutely superb relationship. In my opinion Newcastle United bleeds Adidas, it’s always been an Adidas city.”
Given the rise of the replica kit market in the last 30 years – a recent Uefa report pegged Liverpool as making £110m a year from combined kit sales and sponsorship deals – this stuff really, really matters.
Newcastle’s reunion with Adidas is being viewed internally as a chance to press reset on a retail operation that has lagged far behind top six rivals. With commercial revenue key to Newcastle’s spending plans for this summer and beyond, making the Adidas partnership work is essential. It is the biggest commercial deal signed under the new ownership and “significant” improvement has been made over the last 12 months.
The Adidas deal itself is understood to be worth around £30m a year, a huge uplift on the disappointing £5m a year Castore deal that ends this summer. Clubs are notoriously cagey about releasing figures around their kit deals but Manchester United’s long-term Adidas partnership is reported to be worth £90m.
Newcastle, clearly, still have work to do. That is why they are building an ecommerce operation and employing a raft of digital sales and logistics experts to ensure supporters around the world can get their hands on merchandise. As one insider noted: “That hasn’t actually been possible at some points in the recent past.”
Thanks to Mike Ashley’s attempts to challenge it, we also know Newcastle have negotiated an exclusivity deal with JD Sports to sell the kit with them and through the club’s website.
A total refit of the club shop – to the extent that a temporary structure is being erected while the main building undergoes a six figure overhaul – is the most visible part of what promises to be a transformative summer but there is a genuine buzz about the Adidas merchandise that will be on the racks and in the online store.
“The one thing I talked to Adidas about was creating different revenue streams,” Buglass says.
A key part of that is recreating what they’ve done with Arsenal, tapping into themes that will appeal specifically to Newcastle fans. They are part of Adidas’ elite tier of teams, which means bespoke strips and ranges of retro and leisure wear are on their way.
“They’ve incorporated the club’s history into these shirts, they’ve been really, really clever in what they’ve done,” Buglass adds.
“There was just some advice I have given them – make sure you give the fans what they want. And they’ve given them that.
“I’ve even seen the follow up season as well, which goes to another level. The 2025-26 shirts are absolutely incredible.”
Getting it right isn’t just about transforming the website and club shop, though. It starts with designers who have to create something that resonates with supporters, has the backing of the board and is popular with players. That is not always an easy task.
Buglass remembers presenting what turned out to be the Invincibles season kits to former Arsenal owner David Dein and originally proposing a grey change strip.
“We were sat in the boardroom, it was him and Arsene Wenger and David was raging at me,” he says.
‘He was shouting ‘We’re not grey, we’re a sunshine club, get that out!’ Thankfully I had the yellow as a back up and he said ‘Yes, that’s the one’ so that’s how that happened.”
New shirt technologies and sports science are also part of designs. In 2002 the intensity of the yellow on Brazil’s Nike kit was based on a shade that would benefit a player’s peripheral vision.
Strip launches have become an increasingly integral part of clubs’ summer plans. Norwich City commercial director Sam Jeffery tells i it has the power to set “the tone and narrative” of the season.
“It’s very important from a brand perspective. If you launch a clanging bad shirt it sets you off on the worst possible footing,” he says.
Luckily that has not been an issue for Norwich, who have developed a reputation for creativity around their kits. Last season’s shirt was voted the best in Europe by FourFourTwo and Jeffery tells i home shirt sales are around the 30-35,000 mark.
But demand is not taken for granted. Norwich’s success comes from smart thinking around strips, not least a decision to form a partnership with a so-called challenger brand in Spanish firm Joma.
“Our non-negotiable has been control over the design,” Jeffery explains.
“If you’re a top level club for Nike or Adidas or Puma then you get creative control. If you’re a tier two level – which is what we’d be – you have to plug your colours in to fit that design.
“I hear some horror stories where the brand wouldn’t even allow the club to use their colour.
“We work with a challenger brand in Joma, we like creative control and we want a high level of customer service as well. We’d rather be a big fish in a smaller pond than just another club for a bigger brand.
“You want someone to pick up the phone to you when you need to: certainly during Covid, the Suez crisis, the potential Houthi crisis now, you want someone to tell you that your shirts are on a boat somewhere and will get here on time.
“Joma air freighted all of the shirts over last year.”
Jeffery is a unique position to break down the business of kits, offering insight into the priorities that Norwich have when it comes to going to tender.
They take into account five areas when deciding which brand to partner with. First up is the royalty fee (the upfront amount the brand will pay). In Norwich’s case, Joma also sponsor a stand, which boosts club revenue.
Cost price of the shirts is the next consideration, followed by “gift of kit”. Essentially that means how much free kit and training wear will be provided to the club across first team and academy sides.
Creative control and customer service also figure prominently in any decision.
“When we went out to tender we had a vast spreadsheet with things like cost price and projected sales. We got to the stage where we had seven or eight in the mix,” Jeffery explains.
“We wanted to be at the stage where we had one so-called challenger brand and one big brand. Invariably for us the challenger brand was better, but there was the intangible of the bigger brand, will a swoosh sell better for us?
“We went with Joma and it’s been such a positive relationship. We’ve ordered way more shirts than they thought we would and made significant profit on those – so we decided last year to extend the deal early.”
He says that when the deal ends in 2028, they will go to full tender again – just to “test the market”.
What has changed in recent years is the voracious demand from fans to see next year’s strips, sparking a cottage industry devoted to kits.
Jeffery admits summer launches – which some clubs spend six figures on – have become a competitive business among clubs but there is an element of dread around designs leaking early.
“It’s always a worry,” he says.
“In my first season here our kit leaked due to a clerical error. Fans had notifications on, screenshotted it and it was out there.
“We have a very, very, very tight knit group that are aware of those risks.
“We have to take the phones off players when they’re photographed in it because players love a selfie.
“We had a player who took a picture and was about to Snap chat it and we had to take the phone off them and delete it!
“The factories are all in the Far East. They probably don’t care enough about Norwich to leak it but they definitely do when it comes to Arsenal or Manchester United. All it takes is one person to take a quick snap.
“Sometimes clubs spin it as deliberate but I don’t think you’d want it to leak as Manchester United, having spent hundreds of thousands on the launch. Any testing we do is fully encrypted and then you keep your fingers crossed.”
Last week, a picture of Harvey Barnes wearing an Adidas-branded Newcastle shirt was doing the rounds on the internet. Social media posts with the snap have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, suggesting the buzz around Newcastle’s first Adidas kit for 14 years is far from concocted.
For those on Tyneside this is a big deal, in more ways than one.
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