“The club might sell more if they had a shop in the town again”
I was just expanding on Cats above comment Sid so again disagree as is keeping to the point within comment that we are discussing.
With regards to your comments, “It’s nothing to do with gaining new supporters” a shop in the town would be everything to do with gaining new supporters, and “you don’t go to the trouble of buying from the club shop unless you are already a fan” the shop at Bescot yes, but that is such a blinkered view as as you say people trying to buy from the shop at Bescot are already fans so where are the new ones going to come from? Any shop should be an outlet thirsting to take your money from you and badly needs sorting along with the many other well documented problems around the match day experience but a shop in the town would have the opportunity for so much more in my opinion.
The online shopping needs sorting but will never be the answer in my opinion as i think most footy fans still prefer to go into a good club shop to have a good browse, look at, touch, and feel what they are buying and that in itself strenghthens the bond between club and fan.
We can agree on that shady,but to make the effort of going to Bescot and just hoping they will have what you want and will be open,you would need to be a fan.But even opening a shop in the town would bring it’s own costs with rent and staff,and they obviously decided that it wasn’t paying when they closed the town centre shop.
Correct Sid, but i also said :
“with the amount of shops empty in Walsall surely never a better time to drive for a peppercorn rent or even rent free deal just to fill a shop”
All i`m saying is that apart from the loyal hardcore few thousand the club is somewhat disconnected from the town it should proudly represent and a town centre shop is just one way maybe of going some way to rectify that and surely worth investment of a couple of staff for a trial period.
“obviously decided that it wasn’t paying when they closed the town centre shop”
This may be true but as we all know from experience about Uncle Jeffs 1970`s penny pinching business model and thinking i would err on the side that the shop was doing ok but true to form all he could think about was to invoke his usual short sighted view that yes its doing well but if we move it to Bescot it will remove the rent and do better.
On the face of it and balance sheet looks good but as said previous alienated the club and reduced it to reliance on the faithful few with no presence anywhere except on a match day at Bescot.
Even WFC at some stage has to start to think bigger than this.
Good post. Walsall the football club is a bit like a enclave rather than part and parcel of the town. The two should be absolutely synonymous.
Part geography, part attitude. The geographical bit means that visitors to the club have absolutely no sense of the town. The attitude bit in my mind is a mutual distancing that meant Jeff’s empire different to that of the tin gods running the town. An unseen and unspoken border.
Is there a cash flow problem? Wouldnt we have heard something from other channels?
I presumed the club would have just entered ‘off season’ mode to offset the lack of income - no stewards, chefs, programmes, floodlights, cleaners, etc etc.
Genuinely dont know, but ive not seen a push for income on the official channels.
Spot on PT.
“The geographical bit means that visitors to the club have absolutely no sense of the town”
And vice versa, local visitors to the town have have no sense of the club.
It’s all very well saying that,what about if the town centre shop costs a fortune to get it fit for purpose,a fortune to stock it,and a fortune in rent,and it’s losing money because people are buying tickets etc online because it’s so much easier. Should we be losing money just to be “SYNONYMOUS”?
I wasn’t necessarily talking about the shop. But the lack of presence in the town centre is striking. The football club is the town’s biggest attraction and yet you wouldn’t know it existed unless you decided to walk south for half an hour. Similarly, the club has culturally disassociated from the town by doing things like branding its conference facilities “The Venue, Birmingham”.
Walsall the football club puts Walsall the town on the map. Folk from across the rest of the country and even beyond wouldn’t have a clue it existed or where it is if it wasn’t for the football club. Yet those who run the town have always been fairly ambivalent about potentially its biggest asset. And that ambivalence seems entirely mutual.
That makes me cringe,apart from it being misleading to visitors, it shows just how little confidence in the town that Whalley,Bonser & co purported to represent .
I live in Torbay and as you can imagine I don’t get to see the Saddlers very often, though in past few years every game I’ve seen has been dire… but I digress
I usually go to Exeter, the city not the Football club, every week and I noticed for a few weeks before Christmas that Exeter Chiefs ( Rugby Team ) had a temporary mobile shop outlet parked within the main shopping area.
They do not have a permanent shop in Exeter and they are mega-rich compared to the Saddlers.
Looking at their rise in the Rugby hierarchy over the past few years, most of it has been done by strong management and an aggressive marketing strategy.
I think it has worked
Do the people of Walsall care if they are ‘on the map’?
My “home” for the past 10 years. They were down with us not that long ago. The rise of the football club had a big impact on the local economy.
Dunno. But for those who live in the town, those running the town should.
It’s a marketing thing isn’t it unfortunately. Hotels in Cannock are listed as Birmingham North 
Half of them couldn’t find Walsall on a map themselves.
I can imagine. Liverpool would be a whole next level but when they are at home the city is alive with visitors. The amount of tourist fans that come to watch Liverpool play does ■■■■ off a lot of local fans but it pours millions into the local economy.
The good thing is that Liverpool recognise the uneasiness many locals have with being locked out by all of those visitors and therefore will prioritise local fans at affordable prices when they develop the Anfield Road end and add around 7,500 to the current capacity.
Walsall isn’t quite Liverpool but we offer nowt for visiting fans (and that is all fans who come from outside the town including home fans). Most who come by public transport go for a drink in Birmingham and those who drive are in and out as quickly as they can manage it. Very few will venture anywhere near the town and other than the money they spend at the football very little money that those visitors bring will find its way into the Walsall economy.
Nail … Head
MARKETING
The Wheatsheaf by Blue Coat Comp was rammed with very well behaved Darlington fans ahead of the FA Cup tie. Caught the staff completely on the hop but they made more than £2,000 in a couple of hours.
They recently had a coach load of Newcastle fans in before the West Brom FA Cup game too, which I presume was word of mouth.
The landlord told me he’d got in touch with Walsall FC to become a designated away pub but didn’t get a reply.
Goes to show local businesses can benefit from football traffic, though.
Shop is pretty rubbish compared to many other comparable league clubs, likes of Tranmere and Peterborough have much more stock and general space.
Add in lack of footfall during the week and it could be probably closed for three hours on a Tuesday and hardly anyone would notice unless coming for a special visit like yourself.
That said I did get a ticket for Orient in there when the ticket office was closed on Wednesday.
Edit: Good spot would be the vacant unit in the indoor shopping bit on the way to catching a train, would do good business on matchday certainly.
Something we could help with imo