I keep seeing this being quoted about these being our fastest selling shirts ever, personally I can't verify that one way or another, but I'm not convinced that it's because of the design, colours or growing fan base at all.
I suspect its more because Puma have thrown way more money at pushing the shirts than anyone has for us before, I have visited Leeds and York recently and have seen the huge windows of the sports shops there plastered with adverts for our kits and no others. People have been saying that the shops abroad only have City kits and no others from England, no rags, no Chelsea, no dippers, just City.
The amount of marketing and sheer availability from different points of purchase is frankly staggering. Puma are definitely pushing sales of our kit to the urban youth market, which I think is their main market for their normal gear already, they may be paying us a few quid but they've definitely put a fair amount of cash towards the marketing budget for our kit.
The home and away kits were also released relatively late in the summer due to the expiring deal with Nike, I think because of that people will have been snapping them up straight away for their hols rather than the usual way the holiday/family sales are a bit more staggered over summer.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not convinced that all these amazing sales statistics prove that throwing a bit of purple on the home kit or having some wacky adverting spiel to go with the black away kit is what's brought in these huge sales to all these trendy young hipsters and JCL foreign fans.
Personally I suspect that if the purple on the home kit was replaced with white then they'd have sold more kits than they already have done, the marketing will have still drawn in the urban trendsters, the JCL crew would have snapped the shirt up regardless (even if it was red) so the only sales they've lost are the older local fans who don't want a Burnley away shirt.
I don't think if the purple on the home kit was replaced by white that would affect the sales of the anniversary kit either, they're still both different enough from each other to each have their own 'identity', I suspect that the anniversary shirt will be the lowest selling as that's the one that it will be harder for Puma to market using rappers or whoever so the market for that will just be the actual local fans. It will more than likely be the most expensive of the three.
The third kit is just designed for 6 year olds so that will probably sell as many as all the other wacky third kits we've had recently, I've no idea how they compare sales wise to our less 'out there' kits but it would be interesting to know.