Custom Projects · Wimbledon 2026
Stella Artois needed a piece of Wimbledon merchandise that could survive the walk down the hill. We made a fully custom sock — and it sold out of a pub.
The pub at the top of the hill
If you have ever walked to the All England Club, you have walked past The Dog & Fox. It sits in Wimbledon Village, a short leafy stroll from the gates, and for two weeks every summer it becomes one of the busiest rooms in British sport.
For the 2026 Championships, Stella Artois — the official beer of Wimbledon — took it over and did something more interesting than putting up a bar. They ran a proper pop-up store inside it. Open 10am to 7pm, every single day of the tournament. Buy a Stella, get a token. Spend the token in the shop. Profits to Wooden Spoon, the children’s charity.
That mechanic puts an unusual amount of pressure on the product range. This is not a giveaway table at a conference. It is a real shop, with a real transaction, in front of a crowd that has just spent a fortnight looking at some of the best-executed brand design in world sport. The merchandise has to hold its own.
They came to us for the sock.
Most event merch has one job: get taken. Good event merch has a second job — get worn six months later, in a city nowhere near the venue.
Four decisions that made it
Fully custom means there is no template to fall back on. Every element is a choice. Here is what we chose, and why.
1. Wimbledon’s palette, not Stella’s
Purple and green on white. We banded the cuff in the Championships’ own colours rather than leading with red Stella livery. The result reads as Wimbledon from across a room, and as Stella Artois when you look closer. On a partnership piece, that is the right order — borrow the equity, don’t shout over it.
2. Tonal branding, knitted in
The Stella Artois roundel sits tone-on-tone in soft sage across the leg, repeated in a rotating all-over pattern. It is knitted, not printed — so it cannot crack, peel or wash off. And because it is tonal rather than high-contrast, the wearer never feels like a walking billboard. Which is precisely why they keep wearing it.
3. A ribbed crew, not a novelty sock
Classic ribbed tennis crew, cushioned footbed, mesh venting through the arch. It sits comfortably inside the tennis-and-terrace aesthetic people already own. A novelty sock gets one wear and a photo. A good crew sock enters the drawer rotation, which is where the brand value actually accrues.
4. Packaging built for a shelf
Branded belly band, hang hole, front-facing roundel, colour-matched striping top and bottom. It had to merchandise cleanly on a rail inside a working pub with very little floor to spare — and photograph well the moment someone put it on their story.
Fourteen days, no second chance
A dated event is a different kind of deadline. There is no restock window and no soft launch. If the cartons land on finals weekend, the whole programme is a write-off.
So the timeline runs backwards from opening day, with three non-negotiables:
Physical samples before sign-off. Knitted samples in hand, not renders on a screen. Yarn tone, rib density and cuff tension all behave differently in the flesh. Approving a JPEG is how you end up with a delivery that disappoints.
A buffer, not a photo finish. We land ahead of the window with contingency built in. Early is the entire job.
Retail-ready on arrival. Packed, banded and merchandisable straight out of the box.
What this says about merch
Branded merchandise usually turns up as a line item at the bottom of an activation budget. It is also, almost always, the only part of the activation that goes home with the customer.
Think about what that means. Everything else at a live event is rented attention — the bar, the screens, the signage, the staff. It all comes down at the end and it stops working the moment it does. Merchandise is the single asset that walks out the door and keeps earning. And it is the one people most reliably under-invest in.
Three things we would tell any brand planning an activation:
Wearability beats visibility. A subtle logo worn fifty times outperforms a huge logo worn once. Optimise for the second year, not the first weekend.
If it can be sold, sell it. Charging for merch — even via a drink token, even for charity — changes how people value it. Free merch is disposable by default.
Custom is a different product. Printing a logo onto a stock sock is decoration. Building the colour and the branding into the knit is manufacturing. They do not feel the same on the foot, and everyone can tell.
Want your own?
We do fully custom from the yarn up — your colourway, your branding knitted in, your packaging, delivered to your deadline. Events, teams, clubs, product launches, staff kit. Minimums and lead times are usually more workable than people assume.
Stella Artois, Wimbledon and The Championships are trademarks of their respective owners. This article documents a client project and does not imply endorsement of Solos™ by those parties.
