How two brothers from the Netherlands have carved a extremely profitable area of interest within the soccer market by way of a easy thought you want you’d considered

On paper, it’s a splendidly easy idea. Soccer followers will want they’d considered it themselves, however it’s too late. Dutch brothers Bob (34) and Tijmen Zonderwijk (37) have already picked it up and are sprinting away with it.

FourFourTwo is in an workplace block a few 20-minute taxi trip from Amsterdam airport sat throughout a gathering room desk with youthful brother Bob. He’s baby-faced, with a giant smile and bares remarkably little resemblance to his older brother.

“We’re fully the other when it comes to character, we do not actually look alike both, individuals are normally like: are you guys, brothers!? Tijmen is extra an entrepreneurial kind and I am a bit of bit extra in regards to the processes, controls, checks and balances.”

‘We’re taking care of this for Ed’

Between us, up on the wall within the laid-back area (which MatchWornShirt has already outgrown) is a big framed Netherlands shirt with the phrases ‘ED’ printed within the center the place you’d sometimes see a quantity or sponsor.

“This was a present to the nationwide group’s gamers and employees. It’s not match-worn, it has flags from all of the video games they performed on the 2022 World Cup. It belongs to Edgar Davids. He has a home right here across the nook, however he nonetheless wants to return and gather this, we’ll see each time he has time.”

I begin by asking Bob to take me again to the interval when the seed was planted for a enterprise that at present makes a seven-figure month-to-month income auctioning off match-worn soccer shirts.

“I believe it was Christmas 2015,” he recollects. At the moment he was working as a lawyer with Tijmen. However their ardour was at all times soccer. Raised in a village subsequent to Arnhem, Bob is fast to level out they don’t seem to be Vitesse followers – “We do have a delicate spot for Vitesse although”, he admits. Ajax is the place their loyalty lies, following within the footsteps of their grandfather and father. It was their dad who inadvertently led them to the thought for MatchWornShirt.com. As he approached retirement as a college headmaster they wished to purchase him a present.

“We wished to get one thing that represented him, you recognize, for the workplace wall, that type of stuff. A dialog starter. We have been like, ‘Are we gonna give him a portray? Are we gonna do one thing with pictures?’ However he is probably not into that. He is only a easy man like most of us, he loves soccer and he loves his work.

“So we wished to get a match-worn Ajax shirt as a result of we have been season ticket holders for 15 years, and his spotlight was at all times the bi-weekly coming to Amsterdam, having a number of beers, then going to the sport collectively. His favorite participant was Davy Klaassen, which describes a bit of little bit of how my dad is – Klaassen isn’t probably the most extrovert participant, however is a tough employee, driving the group.”