Luke Westcott founded AMS four years ago after finding a niche selling obscure football shirts online and is collaborating with a series African football federations.

Eagle eyed lovers of African football currently following the continent's oldest football tournament, the East Africa based CECAFA Cup may have noticed that two of the participating nations (South Sudan and Zanzibar) are not wearing the usual ubiquitous global brands but are sporting football kits bearing the AMS logo.

Having recently discovered the wonderful colorfully vibrant shirts that form part of AMS' portfolio with the Melbourne based company supplying the national teams of Rwanda, Sierra Leoene, Djibouti as well as a series of domestic South Sudanese domestic club sides, a very curious AS English caught up with owner Westcott and asked the question... how on earth does a 23-year-old from Australia end up supplying football kits for some of the continent's more underdeveloped nations?

Luke Westcott: ”I initially started selling imported Chinese made soccer shirts locally in Melbourne and then via eBay and started to get requests for these obscure African national teams where it was virtually impossible to get hold of replica kit. I soon realized that there was a significant global interest for shirts from these countries with very few brands really commercialising their sale. I identified three nations and offered to sponsor their kit as a test run. Things worked out well and showed that opportunities could exist in many of the lesser developed African nations which are often overlooked by established international brands”.

"I contacted the president of the FA via Facebook and just told him we'd like to send through some kit that we'd designed and manufactured for the team which they eventually started to wear in competitive games. For a period there was no actual deal in place and we'd just send through kit for them to use but now we have an official contract with the federation and have just started to sell replica shirts in the capital Juba. After traveling there, I realized just how much demand there was in the local market with zero supply for local or any African national team shirts and the very few that were available were prohibitively priced replicas at $100 or so... well beyond the means of the bulk of the average fan. We try and ensure that our shirts are priced to cater for the budget of the local market but also aim for a price-point that deters piracy at the same too". "South Sudan is presently somewhat of a test market and we feel that every possible obstacle that comes our way in South Sudan will equip us to deal with any hurdles that we're faced as we look to establish ourselves in other African markets. We're now used to and happy to work with the numerous daily challenges that business there throws up but so far our model has been successful in South Sudan."

"Some of the work and especially designs where local African creatives have been involved in the design process for shirts that Puma have created over the years have been excellent but I feel they have failed to break through into smaller markets and in major markets sold official shirts at prices that were simply beyond the means of the average football fan. They have also tended to solely focus on the bigger African markets and overlook smaller countries."

"I do the bulk of the design work myself but also get input from other creatives before a commercial release. We submit proposals to the federations and there is the usual back-and-forth procedure before we get the definitive concept. We always look for elements in the design that are culturally relevant."

"We now do get federations approaching us looking for terms and conditions and we're studying proposals with some of the national non FIFA Pacific Island federations to allow then to get much needed funding via kit sales. We work with a number of federations linked with the Confederation of Independent Football Associations (ConIFA) which represents stateless peoples and regions unaffiliated with FIFA . This organization is growing steadily and next summer the UK will host the ConIFA 2018 World Cup which should generate a significant amount of media coverage."

"Via the website the main markets are definitely the US and Western Europe with the bulk of the buyers being non Africans. We're still looking at the best way to tap into the diaspora African market but currently via the site, I'd say it's 95% non-Africans but it's great to see the interest from so many who like the designs or support the concept."

"There was some flak on social media after the Western Sahara deal but we try and avoid political issues even though in Africa that's sometimes easier said than done. Our attention is always to support football and if fans have a team that represents a group of people then our aim is to provide a culturally away kit that they can be proud of."