On Wednesday, Everton announced a Club-record technical partnership with iconic sportswear brand hummel.
The agreement will begin ahead of the start of the 2020/21 season, with the Blues becoming hummel’s global flagship club partner.
Here we delve into the long-standing history of hummel to tell you more about the community-focused innovators who will be making our kits for the next three seasons...
Innovator Creates hummel, Changes Football Forever
Think of Everton and you think primarily of history, tradition, but equally a determination to be innovative, bold and, above all else, to do right by its people.
The same can be said of hummel.
The company's origins date back to 1923 when would-be founder Albert Messmer, a German shoemaker, stood watching a football match. The pitch, close to his home in the Eppendorf area of Hamburg, had been decimated by an abundance of use and rainfall.
Observing the players as they slid about, helplessly failing to get to grips with the treacherous turf beneath them, Messmer determined the flailing figures before him needed something that could make the game they loved accessible all-year round.
It sparked an idea - to create the world's first studded football boot - and led to Messmer joining forces with his brother, Michael Ludwig Messer, to found Messmer&Co, the company that would evolve to become known as hummel.
As Everton had done when becoming one of the 12 founder members of the English Football League 35 years earlier, the Messmer brothers had set their stall out early as sporting trendsetters.
Standing Out From The Crowd
Trendsetting would become a theme for Messmer&Co.
The company quickly transitioned to its new name, hummel, launching a collection containing not only football boots but shoes for cycling, athletics and handball.
'Hummel', the German word for bumblebee, was chosen as a reference to the way the bulky insect with its short legs and small wings defies gravity to fly. Wearing the Messmer brothers' pioneering football boots, players, too, were able to defy convention, and so the name stuck.
The bumblebee logo that survives to this day was adopted to identify the brand, and the business grew.
In 1956, another German visionary, Bernhard Weckenbrook, took control of hummel.
Like Messmer, Weckenbrook understood how a brand could build its reputation through good storytelling but realised, too, that hummel required a then rare quality to stand out in an increasingly competitive market. Personality.
Alas, hummel's iconic chevrons were born. Simple, stylish but, most importantly, uniquely hummel.
Feyenoord's hummel kit of 1987/88.
The Successful Sixties
While Everton restored itself to a position of power in the 1960s and early 1970s, winning two league titles and the FA Cup, the era also proved a defining one for hummel.
It was during this time that the company – by now recognisable across Europe due to its popular chevrons - began to add unique detail and design to football kits that had hitherto tended to vary only in colour, not style.
In 1968, hummel agreed its first sponsorship deal, returning to the country of its birth to link up with a Duisburg side then operating in the German second division.
By the early 1970s, the company had a handful of football stars signed up to wear its somewhat radical all-white boots, leading amongst them Everton talisman and England 1966 World Cup winner Alan Ball.
Alan Ball was one of the first players to agree a deal with hummel in the late 1960s.
Real Madrid Sign On
Soon, the chevrons would begin appearing on the shirts of more and more club sides across Europe and, by 1988, hummel was shaking hands on an agreement with one of the biggest of them all - Spanish giants Real Madrid and their star player, the great striker Emilio Butragueño.
In England, Tottenham Hotspur were already on board, having begun an eventual six-year association with hummel in 1985. As Gary Lineker and Paul Gascoigne entertained Spurs fans at the turn of the decade, they did so wearing hummel, including en route to their 1991 FA Cup final triumph over Nottingham Forest.
Aston Villa, Benfica, Brondby, Feyenoord, Glasgow Rangers and Red Star Belgrade are among a group of highly respected European clubs to have also enjoyed associations with the brand.
Top left - Emilio Butragueño (front row, far left) and his Real Madrid teammates line up ahead of a game in 1988/89. Top right - Paul Gascoigne and Gary Lineker celebrate Tottenham's 1991 FA Cup semi-final victory over Arsenal at Wembley. Bottom - A blue Real Madrid change kit from the 1990s.
Denmark Stun Europe
Among the many great moments in hummel's near 100-year history, the standout one arguably arrived on 26 June 1992.
As a Denmark team missing its star man in Michael Laudrup stood celebrating their shock European Championship triumph, they did so in striking red and white shirts designed by a sportswear partner by now intrinsically linked with their nation.
Denmark had only been added to the competition after Yugoslavia had been disqualified as a result of the warfare that led to the subsequent break-up of the country.
Due to differences with national team coach Richard Møller Nielsen and doubts about their chances of success, Laudrup elected to sit the tournament out.
Brian Laudrup savours European Championship glory in 1992 and modern-day Danish talisman Christian Eriksen in action at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
However, to widespread disbelief - and in a manner befitting Messmer’s ‘against all odds’ ethos - a team led by Peter Schmeichel, John Jensen and Laudrup's brother, Brian, conquered all before them, defeating France in the group stage and Holland in the semi-final on their way to stunning overwhelming favourites Germany in the final.
hummel had first signed a deal with the Danish national team 13 years earlier, in 1979. They have remained the nation’s kit provider for much of the four decades since.
Changing The World Through Sport
In 1999, hummel was taken over by father and son team Thor and Christian Stadil.
Their arrival at the company coincided with a renewed focus on community and the eventual establishment of a new core mission - to 'change the world through sport'.
Christian introduced a 'Company Karma' philosophy which would see hummel set out to prove a successful sports business could grow its brand around the world and, at the same time, make a positive, telling impact by helping those who need it most.
As such, hummel have been - and remain - keen supporters of LGBT clubs and communities and, amongst others, causes helping refugees, war veterans and disabled children.
hummel have manufactured kits for Glasgow Rangers since 2018.
Continuing To Innovate, Alongside Everton
Everton's deal with hummel will see the Club's men's, women's and Academy squads provided with bespoke playing, training and travel wear for at least the next three seasons.
The agreement will also mean a new range for the Blues' coaching team, as well as the staff and many volunteers of Everton in the Community.
hummel's distinctive look will, therefore, be visible across the Football Club and charity from 2020/21 onwards. Globally, it will be synonymous with Everton, and vice versa.
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As it approaches its 100th year, hummel continues to stay true to the values set out by the actions of Albert Messmer after he strode away from that muddy Eppendorf field in 1923.
To help athletes maximise their potential, against whatever odds they may face.
To be unique. To be stylish. To be bold.
And to accept that striving to be the best is not just about having successes to celebrate but also knowing you did things the right way in getting there.
hummel and Everton, then, makes perfect sense.
