Nyasa Big Bullets’ giant step
By Isaac Salima:
In life, most people want to be associated with good things. It is never surprising that in football, performing teams attract themselves huge following.
However, rules of success in life demands one to come up with new methods or ideas that would make a difference.
Nyasa Big Bullets are surely the team of the moment after achieving in few years what they failed to achieve in almost five decades.
It does not require Bullets supporters to blow their own trumpet to say the team is an example and certainly a case study of how the local game can scale to high levels if well-crafted ideas are turned into realities.
For The People’s Team supporters it just feels good to be a Bullets fan as the team is now a resemblance of a well- managed enterprise and product of big brains.
Gone seems to be the days when newspaper back pages were dominated by stories of Bullets’ wrongdoings – from leadership wrangles to supporters’ mischief.
Established around 1960s it took Bullets almost 50 years to realise that the team cannot continue operating like a social team before officials embraced commercialization.
You just needed to be at the College of Medicine Sports Complex in Blantyre on Friday evening to appreciate that all the above decorations being showered on Bullets were not just useless praises from a broke journalist requiring favours from The People’s Team’s family.
The event scheduled to start at 6pm finally began almost two hours late. However participants that had been put off by the delay recollected themselves when master of ceremonies, Frank Kandu, took the microphone to apologise for the delay before announcing the reason for the gathering.
“We are here to launch Nyasa Big Bullets first ever club magazine,”
The night again proved that Bullets continue leaving no stone unturned in its commercialisation drive.
Appalled by never ending finger pointing on management of the team in 2018 Bullets decided to start operating as a company and incorporated Nyasa Manufacturing Company. From day one that has never betrayed them as the team continues registering success.
Bullets Chief Administration Officer, Albert Chigoga, said he was pleased that the team has finally achieved its longtime dream of launching a club magazine.
Chigoga described the unveiling of the club magazine as a great milestone in its commercialisation endeavors.
“We have been promising our supporters that we will come up with innovative programmes, ideas and services and the magazine is one of those products,” Chigoga said.
He said they have come up with the magazine for commercial purposes and also keep their supporters updated on required information.
“We have huge demands of the magazines from our supporters. We will take them to the people and we believe that we will make huge sales,” Chigoga said.
He said they will recruit vendors who will be selling the magazines as a way of making them accessible to the people.
The magazines will be produced quarterly. The 58-paged magazines selling at K4,000 each, consists of among others history of The People’s Team, players profiles and other team news.
Football Association of Malawi executive member, Fellister Dossi, who represented the association’s president Walter Nyamilandu, said it was high time teams borrowed a leaf from what Bullets was doing.
“Clubs have to be self-reliant and that cannot come on its own as it requires efforts and determination. We commend Bullets for being a shining example and we only hope that the project will be sustained,” Dossi said.
Minister of Youth Sports and Culture, Francis Phiso, said the magazine is a convenient platform that will link the club and its thousands of supporters across the country.
“I wish therefore to urge the corporate world to utilise this tool and reach out to thousands of potential customers. This magazine if well managed shall help generate the much needed revenue and my call therefore is that you put in measures that shall not only sustain the magazine but also make it grow into a quarterly issue as planned,” Phiso said.
Car dealers HTD Limited who are also partners of Bullets sponsors Nyasa Manufacturing Company were the highest bidder during auction sale and got the magazine at K570,000.
Bullets recently introduced replica jerseys which are also doing well on the market.
Bullets’ Business Development Manager, Kelvin Moyo, was quoted during recently as saying that he was pleased with overwhelming response from their supporters on the replicas.
As if that is not enough the club last year started registering its supporters an initiative that saw over 7,000 supporters being registered.
In his final word Chigoga said he was delighted that they were making inroads in their commercialisation.
“It has been a smooth journey. For people to adopt football related products ideas, is not easy and I believe this is just the beginning building our brand,” he said.
As Kandu announced end of the event, the take home message was surely that success will never lower its standards to accommodate us but we always need strive for it.
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