The third club featured in our Top Tops 2023 series is newcomers, Sowegans FC, who represent Southwest Georgia - we reached out to the club and Josh Duckworth was happy to talk about the unique culture of the region, what inspired the aesthetic of the club, “We wanted the brand to reflect the community as much as possible. Southwest, GA is the least populated part of the state, and we are surrounded by lots of rivers, pine forests, farmland, and other outdoor opportunities. We also have lots of groups working on animal conservation. That’s where we got the idea of an alligator snapping turtle! About 50 years ago it was close to being added to the endangered list, but local organizations worked hard to prevent that and now our Flint River has a great population of them! We wanted our brand to not only reflect the community and be attractive, but also to teach others about our part of the world.

This gorgeous gem of a kit, representing Southwest Georgia, first dropped on April 11th.

We won’t have to wait long to see their kits in action, and for a good cause as well, "One of our first games we are planning to partner with a local organization to highlight our rivers and land and raise awareness and some funds for creation care.”

It feels like we've known you were coming for a year! When did you start the branding process and how far along was the club when you first started daydreaming about kit designs?
True! We announced our club this time last year and have been busy every since. We began the branding process of our club a few months before the announcement. Even before we announced our club we reached out to several kit designers to get ideas and mock ups.

Not every club finds value in bespoke designs, some just go with big brand templates, who is the manufacturer and what inspired Sowegans to go with custom kits?
We went with Stimulus. Someone I trust recommended them, so I sparked up a conversation, liked what they offered, so here we are. I believe branding is so important, especially to build local support. Having custom kits is important for the SSC brand and creating pride in our local club. Since we shared the kit last week, it’s created a lot more buzz about the club.

Tell us about your top or tops, how many will there be, and what are the design elements of each?
We’ve only announced the primary, but we have three others: Two GK kits as well as our secondary kit. We’ll announced those really soon. We went pretty subtle with them all, but we did that intentionally. I’m sure we may get crazier with some in the future, but this one being our first, we want it to have a classic feel and give us a foundation for the future.

Sowegans revealed their away shirt on April 19th.

Who is responsible for the design? Tell us about the process of finding that person and why you chose them?|
I gave several kit manufacturers my thoughts and they ran with it. Several came up with very similar designs. I have a few friends and SSC Board members that I bounced ideas off of as well. Once I gave Stimulus my ideas, it didn’t take them long to create what we have.

Custom kits are amazing, but can be costly, do you see this as a marketing tool, a cost, or merchandise?
Very costly indeed! I definitely see them as a marketing tool. We decided to only buy kits for our players, and so we point fans to the Stimulus page to buy their own. So at this point we aren’t making any profit off of them. But we plan to eventually buy a bulk to sell at games, it just wasn’t in the pre-season budget. If someone wants to buy the primary, now’s the time because it’ll never be cheaper!

What other merch can folks find and how can we get our hands on it?
Thanks for asking! We’ve got an online team store with some pretty cool swag. We have some other things in the works to add as well. Check it out at https://www.soweganssc.com/shop

by Joshua Duder