Jonathan Eighteen Reveals the Impact of AFC Fylde’s Partnership with Evolve
AFC Fylde is a professional football club based in Wesham, near Blackpool in Lancashire, England. They currently play in the National League, which is the fifth tier of the English football league system. The club was founded in 1988 as Kirkham & Wesham FC and changed its name to AFC Fylde in 2008 after winning the FA Vase that year.
The club has risen through the lower leagues of English football and is known for its ambition to reach the English Football League (EFL). They play their home matches at Mill Farm, a modern stadium that opened in 2016. More than anything, the club is renowned throughout the country for its rapid growth and community involvement.
In this exclusive interview, Jonathan Eighteen, commercial manager at AFC Fylde, shares insights into the club’s remarkable journey from humble beginnings to becoming a rising force in football. Discover how the club attracts fans from across the globe, the secrets behind its local business partnerships, and what keeps its ambitions soaring.
Plus, find out why an Evolve photocopier might just be the heartbeat of their success! Dive in to hear more about AFC Fylde’s plans for the future and what makes this club truly unique.
Hi Jonathan. What do you do at AFC Fylde?
I’m the commercial manager here, and my responsibility is mainly to generate revenue for the club. I also oversee hospitality. Ultimately, I think this club has been on a hell of a journey for over 30 years. Pre-1988, we were Kirkham and Wesham, playing in quite humble surroundings, and the attendances would bear testament to that.
We’re very lucky that we’ve got an incredibly passionate chairman and president who, over the last 20 years or so, have taken the club on a hell of a journey. And we sit here now in 2024; I’m overlooking the pitch at Mill Farm. We’ve spent a lot on the infrastructure and a new pitch this season. So we’ve invested a lot of money both on and off the pitch.
The ground looks good, and I’m just very lucky. I’m one of these lads who has watched football since I was a little kid. I’m a Liverpool fan, so I’ve had a decent kind of 10 years with Klopp and with Slot now. But – I genuinely mean this – my passion is absolutely in this club.
We’re not the biggest club yet; we don’t claim to be. But what we have is fantastic facilities and a very loyal local fan base, and we also attract people who are curious about the Fylde brand. We have fans that travel from Glasgow to London. We even have international fans. Our Tartan Army travels down in good numbers. We’ve just learned of what we’re now affectionately calling the Atlantic Coasters. So we’ve got some American fans.
Our chairman, David, travels the world and flies the flag for Fylde. As we say, our big mantra is “growing the club one fan at a time.” And we literally do see that week to week where we see new faces, and we sell new shirts to new fans who have never been before.
On the women’s side of things, there are only two clubs in the country that we’re aware of with dedicated home grounds, which are Man City and us. So that’s something to be very proud of. We’ve put some good investment into the women’s team this season – new sponsors on the front and the back of the shirt for the first time in the club’s history, which is great for the women’s side of things.
All in all, we’re on an upward trajectory to achieve what we ultimately want to achieve, which is EFL status in a few years. We were on course, and then that dreaded Covid landed. I don’t think we were the only club to suffer from that. I’ve still got issues with the way we were relegated with points per game and all that kind of system that seemed to be very controversial, let’s say.
But we’re back now, and it’s a club to be very proud to be involved in.
What kind of impact does AFC Fylde’s success have on the local and regional economy?
As a commercial manager, I conduct meetings here at Mill Farm with new customers constantly. I’ll name-check a few that I’ve met in the last week or so – a guy called Roger Hadley, whose company, Sustain Blue, is a business consultancy. He came for a look around the stadium ten days ago.
We’ve taken him on a little bit of a mini-journey, and ultimately, in a couple of years’ time, I think he’ll be a very strong ambassador for the club and do more with sponsorship. For example, he’s sponsored a couple of players.
A local guy, Andy Pickering, from Pickering Motor Services, had nothing to do with the club. He came by just because he was driving past, taking his children to the hockey at our sports and education centre down the road. He stopped, had a coffee, and we took him around. Wow. He couldn’t believe it; he didn’t know this was here. So, each and every customer that we meet – and a lot of them are new – buys into the ethos of the club.
As a commercial manager, I’ve done newspaper sales, radio advertising, and various other things in my career. But when you take people around the facilities, or they come for hospitality on match day, I’m not going to lie – it makes my job a lot easier.
Evolve Document Solutions is your document management partner. How do they help the club?
Goodness me! I don’t know where we’d be without that little [photocopier] machine. I say ‘little’ – it’s a fair size! But I don’t know where we’d be without it because, and I like this – the guys at Evolve actually use this as a bit of a slogan – it’s like the heartbeat of the office.
First of all, it’s where all the interesting conversations take place, which is great because you’re away from your desk! But anything from pre-match orders, hospitality bookings, to documents within sponsorship contracts – everything goes through that [photocopier].
It’s not just your bog-standard photocopying. I’ve probably got in my inbox, amongst the 30,000 emails I have constantly, scans of documents that go back years. We use it for email facilities, scanning, and photocopying.
We do the little things, too. For example, on match day, every single hospitality guest gets a little A5 “Time of Goal” sheet. I print 150 of those every match day. Without that, we’d have to send it to a printer and it would cost us a small fortune. So, there’s a real cost-saving exercise with using Evolve.
And I have to say, Evolve don’t just supply Mill Farm as a football stadium. Our chairman has a very successful international business, and I’m led to believe Evolve has worked with Tangerine Holdings for nearly 20 years – 18 years, to be precise. You don’t work with someone for that long without delivering what’s needed.
What do you think is the secret to the partnership’s longevity?
Honestly, I think it’s – and it’s going to sound old-fashioned these days – but good old-fashioned service. You see testimonials and think, yeah, but is that really the case? But I can absolutely, hand on heart, say that if we ring Evolve because there’s a problem (and let’s be honest, I would say a photocopier engineer is probably on the same level as a brain surgeon! You open that flap, and you go, “I don’t know what any of this means or even what I’m looking at!”) with Evolve, it’s, “Hello, Jonathan,” and they say, “No problem.” Most of the time, they’re out within a few hours.
What more can you ask for? That’s how you win!
What would you say to another business looking to improve the efficiency of their multi-function printing devices? Would you recommend Evolve?
Absolutely. I’ve worked in offices, radio stations, and newspaper offices, and – it’s a funny thing with photocopiers – you just assume they’ll always work. People only have a meltdown when they don’t work. It’s like your car – you get in, expect it to start, and don’t give it a second thought. But [it’s all about] that moment when you need printing done and can’t do it!
The support we get from Dan and the team is second to none. It’s an absolute no-brainer to me. They’re well-located, too. I don’t know their exact geographical range, but we’re in the Lytham, Wesham, and Kirkham areas, and they are based in Bamber Bridge. So if you’re in Manchester or Liverpool, they’re the best in the game by a country mile, as far as I’ve found.