![Premier Ultimate League PSP – Behind the Scenes & Updates](http://ca.vcultimate.com/cdn/shop/articles/InstaStory-PUL-PSP.jpg?v=1588681280&width=1500)
Premier Ultimate League PSP – Behind the Scenes & Updates
If you follow us on Instagram and have been tuning in lately, you may have seen that we're doing midday live chats with Premier Ultimate League (PUL) teams' leaders as their Player Sponsorship Program jerseys are getting ready to ship.
We wanted to share our view of this year's program launch, as well as what it's like to produce 1400 sponsor jerseys in the middle of a global pandemic.
Always be learning | Reflections & Growth from 2019
Preparation for the 2020 Player Sponsorship Program (PSP) began in late 2019. As last year's inaugural initiative set a mind-blowingly high bar, we knew we had to be nothing short of perfect to be ready for the PUL's main public fundraising event.
How we improved:
- Design: In 2019, we had teams designing their PSP jerseys until, oh, 3 minutes before launch (not kidding). This year, VC's own Geneviève Daigle (aka gstar aka "G") ensured that all teams had clean, striking, and production-ready art based on their design concepts well before launch. This allowed us to prepare marketing images and create buzz before the official launch, and also helped get our online store set up early.
Each team had a 3rd jersey designed this year, exclusively for the PSP. As such, sponsors would be sporting a really special apparel piece in support.
- FAQ: Creating this FAQ certainly helped us manage the flow of customer inquiries coming in. Our PSP-specific FAQ helped address the most common inquiries and concerns from last year, which saved our team countless hours of work.
- Site Setup: Our online store coordinator, Thomas Hays, now had an extra year of experience – when it came time to set up the PUL store, it went very smoothly. Imagine... the PSP meant 400 new products being created within a few days – each with its own custom image and description – and sorting 12 collections to ensure they all look their best. This year, all the PUL's individual team stores went live in time for the PSP launch, too – which meant major boosts to our own online sales and, consequently, each team's fundraising efforts - thank you!
- Media Plan: 2019's PSP was a huge success. The 2020 program rolled out with enhanced preparation and communication from VC, the PUL and each of the teams. Re-tweets and Likes matter in this algorithm world, and we appreciate everyone who helped us spread the word!
![](http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0340/2849/files/Launch_Tweet_large.png?v=1588685429)
2020 Launch
Well, our community did break the internet a bit... or at least the VC website! It was caused by too many transactions attempting to process at once; our payment processor simply couldn't handle the volume of the first hour.
To give you an idea of what that first hour looked like, here's a look back through some tweets:
And, after two hours...
We did it!
Spoiler alert, we did it! The Premier Ultimate League's Player Sponsorship Program sold out in 3 days and 19 hours.
What. A. Ride.
Time for Production
We were ready: our recycled FlexLight material was stocked up, our sublimation printers were tuned and ready to print, overtime was budgeted, and staff schedules were set. Everyone was on board and excited to help produce all of the PUL's uniforms seamlessly before their respective season openers, and to complete the PSP jerseys in record time.
It took a lot of planning to ensure that our non-PUL customers wouldn't be affected by this, especially in our (relatively) small, local production facilities. Between the PUL uniforms and PSP sponsor jerseys, we had almost 2,000 jerseys to setup, print, sublimate, sew, quality-control, pack and ship... all within 5-6 weeks.
We lost count of the number of meetings held, emails sent and spreadsheets flying around VCHQ – we were ready.
Then, as we were about a third of the way through the uniforms' production, the news of COVID-19 got more and more serious – ultimately culminating in our province's mandatory shutdown of all non-essential businesses.
And all our momentum... stopped.
Ultimate is NOT Cancelled
The Premier Ultimate League postponed its season on March 12th.
This prompted us to write a post about the state of our sport, to try to inspire our community to stay optimistic.
We quickly came up with a new plan to shift production from the player uniforms, which were no longer needed as quickly, to the PSP jerseys.
As fans weren't able to attend games, we thought about building excitement around receiving a sponsor jersey while being isolated at home, or it being an exciting thing to come home to after a long day as a frontline or essential worker.
Turtles could move faster
To be honest, producing 1,400 jerseys in the middle of a shutdown is not easy. When we closed our HQ, about two-thirds of PSP jerseys were printed, and roughly 10% of them were sewn.
Our production factory also closed its doors, and everything stood completely still for three weeks.
We devised a no-personal-contact plan to go into our office: one person per floor at a time, allowing us to start printing again and slowly but surely getting the rest of the jobs printed and delivered to our factory floor. By then the sewers were back producing non-medical masks for the public, and we were able to slide in a few bundles of jersey panels at a time to fill their production gaps.
It's not happening at the speed we've worked hard to expect, but it's happening – and for that we are grateful.
Jerseys on their way
Our first orders have shipped out! The Milwaukee Monarchs and Indy Red sponsor jerseys are shipping this week.
To celebrate, we launched a live Instagram chat series with representatives from each team to discuss their team's background, communities and brand design, and also to thank all of our sponsors for their patience as we work our way through all of this.
We'll continue doing this with every PUL team as their PSP jerseys are ready to ship, at a rate of 1-2 teams per week (until we get back up to speed).
Please join us! Keep an eye on our Stories for images like these, announcing times where we'll be live on Instagram.
Thanks - and stay healthy and optimistic!
The VC Team
PS - Do you have any questions about VC's relationship with the PUL, or about the Player Sponsorship Program? We'll be sharing more behind-the-scenes content in the upcoming weeks, and are also happy to answer your questions!