The Story of 'Classic Football Shirts'

The Story of 'Classic Football Shirts'

As part of my documentary, I will be heading to London to speak to one of the world’s largest sellers of vintage football gear - Classic Football Shirts. Here is a brief history of how their story has unfolded.

With over 850,000 followers on Instagram, and the place to go for Vintage football attire, Classic Football Shirts has become one of the largest sellers in this market in the world.

The Classic Football Shirts story starts in 2006. Two students in their final year of university wanted a 1990 West Germany shirt, but sourcing classic shirts proved to be difficult. There wasn’t anywhere to shop specifically for vintage shirts and so Matthew Dale and Doug Bierton had identified a gap in the market. With the aim of becoming the place to shop for your vintage football shirts, the pair bought as much stock of vintage shirts as they could find and launched a website in August 2006 with the aim of flogging them. After a difficult start, the duo managed to scrape together £250 to buy an advert in FourFourTwo magazine to promote their business, after which the orders started to flood in. The company is originally from Manchester and moved into their first office in the city centre in 2008.

Their warehouses have been said to house over half a million items, but where are the shirts they sell sourced from? In recent history, new stock is obtained from club websites; however, older shirts have been sourced from other countries who have sold previously exported shirts back to the UK. Their first major haul of stock came from AC Milan and included over 15 years’ worth of player-worn stock; the company were provided with 30,000 outdated items, forcing them to rent a warehouse to house it all.

2017 saw the start of Classic Football Shirts exhibiting match-worn shirts and the start of the company appearing in pop-up stores across the world. In 2018, they opened their first shop in The Truman Brewery in London. On the first day, the shop was fully packed with shirts and people. The company have now moved to a bigger store on Commercial Street in East London.

Also in 2018, they began working with TNT Sport on a series titled ‘What I Wore’. Classic Football Shirts would walk players through their own football shirt history in short videos on TNT Sport’s YouTube channel, and featured players such as Steven Gerrard, Gary Lineker and Gareth Bale, just to name a few.

The company has even had professional players shop for their own desired vintage shirts, including notable names such as Ian Wright, Darren Fletcher and Henrik Larsson.

Classic Football Shirts has also made its mark on football kits, after deciding to become shirt sponsors. In 2017, the company initially became a shirt sponsor for Sheffield FC. More recently, they have sponsored Burnley FC during the 2022-23 season, with the side going on to win the Championship that season. This year, Classic Football Shirts are a sponsor for Italian side Parma Calcio, after continuing to support the club after sponsoring them during their play-off games last season.

This year, the company has attended pop-ups in stores in America and has partnered with former player Giorgio Chiellini, who attends meet-and-greets within these stores, they have also partnered with Adidas, where they had an Adidas takeover in store in London, promoting vintage Adidas items of sportswear.

Most recent successes range from opening a bigger store in Manchester in October that, like their London shop, has a bar and can be used as an event space, to talking shirts with David Beckham in an interview.

Classic Football Shirts has become the destination for fans to buy rare and unique football shirts and to explore the history of their favourite teams and players.

Within my documentary, I shall be speaking to Charlie Hutton, manager in their London store, about how important it is for shirts to have an afterlife.

Stay tuned for interview content soon!