​Sokito’s award-winning response to the annual 12.5m pairs of binned football boots

Footballers love their football boots. The feel of them, the look of them, the reaction they evoke from their teammates. From children’s first experiences with football, with dreams of being a Lionel Messi, Kelly Smith or David Beckham, those feelings of anticipation, excitement and power that come with choosing the boots, opening the box, slipping your foot into them and tying the laces are hard to beat. The first run out, the first tackle, the first goal - in “those” boots. Whether you’re seven or seventy years old, or have a number 7 or 77 on your shirt, football boots are not just important to footballers: they become a part of you.

Enter a 26-year-old entrepreneur, with a passion for football and the environment. On a trip to Asia, he discovered it was possible to make shoes from recycled and vegan materials. So he posed the question: can we make high-performance, durable football boots from sustainable materials?

And equally importantly, the marketing challenge: How would we create a brand that communicated this game-changing idea, in a market dominated by major manufacturers like Nike and Adidas, with huge budgets and an industry firmly planted in its ways?

Objectives

Jake Hardy, the founder, engaged addmustard, a brand, marketing and technology agency that works exclusively with entrepreneurs. With an estimated $5 billion market to go after, we got to work.

“I came to addmustard with a football boot and a mission to be the world’s most eco-friendly sportswear brand. Two years on, we have grown Sokito into a brand valued at over £5.5m. We’re pioneering sustainable, high-performance football boots, maximising player impact on the pitch, not the planet. Together, we’re changing the game.” – Jake Hardy, Founder

The brief: Create a brand, drive awareness and raise investment to enable Sokito to capture 0.5% of the global football market. Build a £100m global football brand that leads the way in sustainability. Then, build the leading, sustainable, global sportswear brand.

Together, we created the brand Sokito, led by the brand proposition: “Performance football boots for maximum impact on the pitch, not the planet”.

Two pillars of our strategy: performance and planet. Unified by a single thought: “Sokito. Change the game”.

Strategy

But are football boots important to anyone? Sure they are.

We spoke to footballers, player-managers, coaches, kit managers, retailers and competitors in focus groups and research, all over the world. We focused on talking to footballers about their passion for their boots. And we uncovered a truth: that football boots are game-changing. Their feel, their performance, their look. They can make a footballer, whether Sunday League or national team captain, feel completely differently about their game.

Making the boots from materials such as wood fibres, recycled carpets, plastic and rubber, castor beans, corn waste and bamboo had never been tried before. Football boots experience extreme forces while a player is accelerating and decelerating. They also need to grip, on soft, medium and hard pitches and on natural and artificial playing surfaces. But most importantly, they had to perform.

Apart from the numerous innovations we’ve made in the product design, materials and manufacturing, we broke down the core brand thought “Change The Game” and analyzed how we could really deliver on that. As an authentic brand, run by a team that believes passionately in its purpose, we have an opportunity to influence more than just football boots: Sokito is making a real difference, right across the sports world, setting examples to the industry, society and other brands about how to innovate and deliver positive impact, on and off the pitch.

Focusing on our pillars of performance and planet, we decided to build our brand, create our communications and make media decisions in the context of changing the game. We have a unique story to tell and we decided to tell it in a way that maximised its impact, with authenticity. We’d let the product do the talking and to engage the football industry in our purpose, to drive awareness.

Through a series of innovations. here’s how we are changing the game:

• We introduced the world’s first football boot recycling scheme, making us the first company in the world to recycle any kind of footwear. We’ve won environmental awards for it, including the prestigious Recycling Project of the Year at the 2023 Green Business Awards.
• We’ve launched the first ever fully certified, vegan performance football boot.
• We’ve commissioned and initiated critical research projects with universities, football clubs, academies, professional sports bodies and environmental groups into the impact of football on the planet.
• We’re working with sports charities, student bodies and player organisations to educate and inform the world of football about the environmental impact of football related activities.
• We’ve initiated and supported the first carbon offsetting for football player transfers, providing crucial data to informing, educating and managing this process.

All of this has helped us build brand awareness and authenticity. And to help us scale and grow the business.

Our strategy to build the brand is through a mixture of football ambassadors, global trade relationships and innovative digital marketing. Like many of the great technology brands (Google, Tesla, OpenAI/ChatGPT) we positioned the business and its communications in the right way and let the product and brand speak for itself. Supported by a bit of well-directed advertising, PR and social media.

Results

• We now have 9 of the top 12 football and sportswear retailers in the world selling Sokito football boots.
• We have orders for over 5,000 pairs of boots in our first year of trading. We expect this to grow by 300% next year.
• We’ve attracted 29 football player-investors and ambassadors for the brand.
• Our boots are worn by Sokito ambassador and Nigeria football captain, Will Troost-Ekong. He scored winning goals in three matches at AFCON 2024. And was voted player of the tournament and led Nigeria all the way to the final. All whilst wearing Sokito’s newest product: the all-vegan, performance football boot, the Scudetta, launching this summer.
• In a joint promotion with Sokito, Will Troost-Ekong and Unisport, one of the top European football boot retailers, announced the Scudetta and attracted more engagement and registrations than any previous boot promotion. 400,000 fans engaged with the campaign and over 10,000 registered.
• We’re the lowest price football boot rated above 4 stars on FourFourTwo.
• The feedback from our customers (12-year-old kids to captains of national teams), and sports publications about both our Devista and Scudetta boots is nothing less than sensational.

“Got my Sokito Devista Vegan in size 8 and 3 games in - what a boot. Easily up there with both the best and most comfortable boots I’ve ever had in 30+ years of playing football. Nice work.”

“FourFourTwo found the Sokito Devista to be immediately comfy, super light and needed no time to break in…” - FourFourTwo

“Sokito is making boots from recycled and sustainable materials that are comfortable, lightweight and it’s great to see lots of professionals wearing them already.” - Sky Sports

“Sokito focuses on sustainability and sustainable football boots to really clean up the space.” - BBC Sport

We’re ranked number one on Google for “vegan football boots”.

Since we launched in 2023, we’ve created over £5.5m in the equity value of the Sokito business.

Sokito. We’re changing the game.

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