On Monday morning, legendary striker Sam Kerr’s return to Gotham FC became official. By the afternoon, fans could already order her new jersey, Gotham’s third kit inspired by the Statue of Liberty, with free name printing for 48 hours through Foudys, a new brick-and-mortar store dedicated exclusively to women’s soccer in Manchester, England.
Just a few years ago, this kind of rapid merchandise rollout would have been almost unheard of in women’s soccer.
Helen Hardy experienced that firsthand. As she prepared to travel to France for the 2019 Women’s World Cup to support England, she struggled to find a Lionesses jersey to wear, a frustration that would ultimately inspire the creation of Foudys.
“Everyone around me was wearing men’s football shirts,” Hardy told The Athletic over a video call from her home in Manchester. “You had fans who had traveled from the U.S., the U.K. and Norway to be in France for this huge moment, and nobody was wearing women’s jerseys.”
The issue was not demand, but access. Women’s jerseys were difficult to find, often buried deep inside major sports retail websites even as England reached the semifinals and drew a massive television audience.
“The message back to brands at the time was, ‘No one cares. They don’t want product,” Hardy said. “But the reality was they were hiding the product on page 12, 13, 14 of their shops.”
She returned from the tournament wondering what it would look like if there were a website that spotlighted women’s sports merchandise year-round. The frustration grew as she attended Manchester City women’s matches and found that even with stars Carli Lloyd, Lucy Bronze, Steph Houghton and Jill Scott, fans still could not easily buy WSL jerseys with women’s players’ names on the back.
So, Hardy walked away from a career in musical theater and, armed with a $265 (£200) heat press bought on eBay, began pressing players’ names onto soccer jerseys from her bedroom in Manchester. Fans would mail her blank shirts, and Hardy would customize them by hand before sending them back.
“In year one I did £50,000 on people just paying £25 for me to print the name on the back of the shirt and post it back to them,” she explained. “I didn’t have a deal with Nike, or anyone like that. Of course, I didn’t. I was just a crazy girl in my bedroom, right?”
Five years later, that bedroom operation has grown into Foudys, a multimillion-pound retailer with its own flagship store and warehouse. As demand grew, Hardy spent nearly two years trying to secure a meeting with Nike to be an official retailer, while her business expanded rapidly. Revenue from jersey customization reached £55,000 (~$65,000) in its first year, climbed to roughly £250,000 to £300,000 in year two and nearly £900,000 by year three.
Today, the company stocks every jersey from the Women’s Super League and the National Women’s Soccer League alongside Europe’s biggest clubs. Hardy has a deal with Nike, Adidas and Puma to sell women’s apparel through her website — and now an actual store at the corner of Deansgate and Great Bridgewater St in Manchester — as she is gearing up for what she believes will be the biggest merchandising opportunity in the history of women’s soccer: the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil.
It will be a full-circle moment for someone who loves the sport and admires former U.S. star Julie Foudy so much that she named her company after the midfielder. Hardy, a Portland Thorns fan, wearing a Denver Summit jumper on top of her Angel City FC jersey as she spoke with The Athletic, has experienced the atmosphere inside NWSL games multiple times, often with an invitation from Julie Foudy, who is an investor in ACFC alongside Mia Hamm, Billie Jean King, Natalie Portman, Jennifer Garner, and Serena Williams.
“She was my hero, I just love her,” Hardy said. “But if I did not call my store Foudys.com, I would have called it Sinclairs.com,” she added, referring to Christine Sinclair, the all-time international leading scorer and one of the greatest players in women’s soccer history, who spent her entire 12-season NWSL career with the Portland Thorns FC.
The timing of opening a physical store named after Foudy is hardly accidental.
Women’s soccer has entered a commercial phase where merchandise is becoming more than a nice-to-have revenue stream. Deloitte projects global women’s elite sports revenues will surpass $3 billion in 2026 for the first time, with soccer and basketball each accounting for roughly 35 percent of that total.
“Women’s soccer has always had the fans,” Emily Tisch Sussman, Gotham FC co-owner and Founder/CEO of the “She Pivots” podcast, told The Athletic. “What it’s been missing is the infrastructure to match. A women-owned store dedicated entirely to women’s athletes isn’t just filling a market gap, it’s creating a gathering point. A place where fans can find their team, wear their identity, and feel part of something. That’s the kind of business that changes culture.”
According to Hardy, Nike projects the women’s soccer merchandise market will represent a £300 ($398) million annual revenue opportunity by 2030. And as Nike’s exclusive global retail partner dedicated solely to women’s soccer, they believe Foudys could capture roughly one-third of that market.
Not bad for what started with a heat press in a Manchester bedroom. The assumption that women fans are not interested in buying jerseys has been proven wrong. The global popularity of the sport and its key players such as Kerr, Aitana Bonmatí, Trinity Rodman and Marta has helped transform jerseys from simple matchday apparel into cultural products. Fans are increasingly buying shirts because they identify with individual athletes rather than simply the clubs they represent.
“It’s also commercially viable because of how women shop,” Hardy said. “Women will buy the Arsenal home jersey and the England away jersey in one go. We’re very different shoppers when it comes to the things we love and fan-girl over.”
That is the gap Foudys is trying to fill.
Rather than competing directly with club megastores, Foudys operates as a specialty retailer, bringing together merchandise from dozens of clubs, national teams and brands under one roof. In many ways, the model mirrors the path taken by Classic Football Shirts, another Manchester-born retailer that transformed the market for vintage jerseys after launching as a small business before expanding to stores in Manchester, London, New York and Los Angeles.
Hardy believes women’s soccer has reached a similar commercial inflection point. Her next ambition is to open a flagship store in New York ahead of the 2027 World Cup. But almost as much as the expansion itself, Hardy is eager for fans to see what brands have created for the tournament.
“I have to keep my mouth shut for another year,” she said. “But this is the best Women’s World Cup collection I’ve ever seen. It’s going to be amazing.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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