About us
Kits galore is a privately owned entity based in Boston, MA (USA). The impetus to create a global e-marketplace specific to football kits was prompted by multiple stimuli:
- First, we drew inspiration from the earliest commerce, in which buyers and sellers would create living markets at pre-arranged times and locations, i.e., the Ancient Agora of Athens. Two and a half millennium later, our grandfather, an Irish cattle trader, still navigated similar localized fairs before they were supplanted by large, centralized auction-based marts. In parallel, retail commerce has industrialized and now moved on-line. But has retail commerce really improved? Yes, in aggregate, but arguably, no, for specialized goods. As a case in point, try to find a vintage kit for your favourite football team. Buying one online necessitates shopping in a global rummage sale. We tried it and after hours of searching bought our favorite kit from a Japanese collector.
- Second, we drew inspiration from economic history beginning with the theory of "purchasing power-parity" which was first postulated by Spanish Renaissance scholars at the School of Salamanca, and the "invisible hand" described in 1776 by Scotland's Adam Smith in his The Wealth of Nations. More contemporaneously, we were influenced by the work of Ronald Coase, a British born neo-classical economist at the University of Chicago, who was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize in economics. Arguably, his 1937 paper, "The Nature of the Firm", which he wrote as an undergraduate student at the London School of Economics and Political Science, foreshadowed the modern gig-economy, in which independent contractors synchronize to function akin to a fully integrated firm, long before the internet burst onto the scene.
- Third we drew inspiration from our "day job" working with doctors, biotech clients, and life-science investors. Unbeknownst to most patients, doctors around the globe engage in a dynamic dialogue, where learning disseminates in near real-time, so their patients can benefit from the experience of others in distant locales. Our biotech clients schooled us on "failing early and fast", "universal pricing models", and "portfolio/taxonomy management". In kind our life-science investor clients taught us to uncompromisingly, almost manically, focus on the "investment thesis".
- Fourth, fan devotion, male and female, to their chosen teams, near and far, inspired us. Eduardo Galeano, a Uruguayan intellectual socialist and author of El fútbol a sol y sombra elegantly articulated this sentiment, "In his life, a man can change wives, political parties or religions but he cannot change his favourite soccer team."
- Finally, we drew inspiration from our children who taught us to: (1) source kits by observing them procure handmade fishing lures from thin air just by earnestly and enthusiastically asking for samples, (2) market efficiently by engaging customers in their environment and using their language, and (3) that perseverance begins with a smile.
Frank Deane, Ph.D.
339-236-4216
fdeane@lumleian.com
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Owned by Lumleian Research, LLC
198 Tremont Street, Suite 231
Boston, MA 02116 USA