Today we’d like to introduce you to Sekou Thornell.
Sekou, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was born and raised in Stone Mountain and the Lower Gwinnett area. The first true love I had was the game of soccer. I went to a local all black youth club in called SMYSA and it is where I cultivated my identity and found some of my truest friends. Even though my parents didn’t really play sports, I excelled and it brought me to places I would’ve never been otherwise. After the club folded from being underfunded, I got sponsored to play for some of the top local clubs in Georgia. It brought me some of the best lessons I have learned in life, but it also brought me the biggest heartbreak. Being on that team also got me a full scholarship to college where I played for Clayton State University, a really good D2 university here in Georgia.
This is where my story really starts. I ran into an ankle injury my junior year in college that forced me to reconstruct all of my ankle ligaments. It happened right at the end of the best college year I ever had. I didn’t understand then, but I think I realize why it happened now. Of course, as the story always goes I was never the same, my confidence was shocked and my form never return. It was a walking mind game until I graduated and then, I decided to give up the dream I had spent my life chasing.
It placed me in a position where I had no direction. I had made it my purpose; now that it was gone I didn’t really have one. The only thing I knew is that I would refuse to do nothing and this is really where my journey started. I brought my focus back inward and wanted to create something allowed me to still use my love for the game but also allowed my homies to eat too since we all grew up playing together. This is how the Kitboys Club was formed. Kitboys creative brand collective that synergies urban culture and sport. Its target is to change the misconceptions about the sport here in the US through product and visual design. In less than a year I couldn’t have imagined the amount of success it has had. From features in major overseas publications like Soccerbible and Copa90, to working with Atlanta United and WorldSoccerShop on design projects it feels like all one crazy blur. However, the most important thing is that it gave me purpose and that love for the sport came back full circle.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Far from it, but if it’s easy, it’s never truly worth it. I had to recreate a lot of myself and spend extensive hours of the day just learning. The collective was a completely different void that I placed myself into and I was determined to keep the brand innovative. I think the biggest struggle is learning on a time table and fighting the idea of perfection. What I didn’t realize while I was playing is that perfectionist mindset hinders growth and thats really what truly matters. Combined with the lack of awareness and attention that soccer gets here, I definitely had my work cut out for me. A lot of my design cues are chosen from nostalgic moments of the sport so communicating that effectively was also a challenge. However, the cool thing about it is that it gave soccer enthusiasts that feeling of “if you know, you know” which made everything feel authentic. Likewise, the success of Atlanta United as a team created a lot of buzz around the city as I was getting off the ground.
Kitboys Club – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
So, yeah, the Kitboys Club is a creative brand collective that synergizes design and sport in order to alter the stigmas that surround soccer here in the states. We do this through product design, merchandising, videography and curated events. Doing this, we are able to market soccer into voids unrelated to its own and expands its awareness at the same time. Generally, a lot of our projects have been designed based on corporate and local brands. That’s our strongest branding point. Our ability to take an object and combine our design imprint to give it an entirely different context that usually creates a dialogue. Every product or piece of content we put out has a purpose and commits a message. We operate very similar to Hiroshi Fujiwara’s Design imprint Fragment.
Jersey design has been our strongest suit so far. We created a project called The Reconstruction Series, where we dissect or reimagine different types of jerseys to commit some type of message or imagery. Atlanta United, World Soccer Shop, and ResidenceATL are some of the names we have collaborated with throughout that series. We have also curated special projects for Waka flocka and Jack Harlow’s collective Private Garden.
We want people to see soccer for more than being just a sport. We hope that the things we create help bring more awareness for the sport while building a bridge of communication that is essential to pushing the sporting culture forward. The foundation of the sport resides among the diverse cultures that represent it. We are just an extension of that.
The company’s growth in a year makes me really proud, to be honest. We were just kids trying to do cool shit. None of us went to design school or film school but theirs is a beauty in that aesthetic. It’s raw and authentic. It’s also what separates us from others. There is no manual for what we do and we are the first to really do it. It’s so unorthodox that it makes it unique. Honestly, most of the time, it’s really hard to explain what we do because we do so many different things. We are really just telling people soccer is cool and blending it with other voids in order to solidify that.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
This is a hard one but I think collaborating with Atlanta United on marketing projects so early on and the collaboration with World Soccer Shop are my proudest moments. World soccer shop is the second largest distributor of soccer product in the US and Atlanta United is the home base team. To have them acknowledge our craft while being so young means that we are clearly doing something right. On top of that, each project got features from Soccerbible and Copa90 and these are the top soccer publications around the world. It’s truly an honor and we are extremely blessed to have that opportunity to share our perspective with the world.
Contact Info:
- Website: kitboysworldwide.com
- Phone: 4045187193
- Email: kitboys.team@gmail.com
- Instagram: kitboys.club
- Facebook: Kitboys Club
- Twitter: Kitboys_Club
- Other: https://www.behance.net/kitboysclub
Image Credit:
Turfmapp, Kitboys Club, Kennyinfinite, Worldsoccershop
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