Name: John Moncke
Title: Sporting KC VP/Stadium & Brand Revenue
Where I'm from: K.C.
Where I call home: K.C.
Focusing on right now: Because of the Adidas calendar that relates to their production timeline, we are working on the prototype round for our 2019 uniforms. Any day now we will get in our hands the first prototype.
Best advice: Be really good at something outside of the sports industry, and then be able to show how that is relevant within sports. That will help differentiate one candidate from maybe a pool of candidates who look pretty similar. I love MICHAEL JORDAN, and one of the big things I learned watching his career was that he practiced like he was playing games. It's something we talk a lot about on the business side -- we're working just as hard today or yesterday as the same day we're hosting a game.
Must have in a new hire: Figure out if someone's a good person. There are a lot of people who are good at what they do, but if they aren't good people, they're going to do things that aren't best for the business. I look for a good person, but I do want to find someone who has a specialized experience outside of sports that can then translate into sports. I also look for people who are entrepreneurial.
Exec I admire: I've never met her, but I really admire what JENNA LYONS from J. Crew did. She was the executive creative director and then became president of J. Crew. She was someone who had really great taste, she had a really different point of view on fashion. Then J. Crew had revenue growth of three times during her time in leadership.
Book shelf: On the flight out to our game in Salt Lake City on Sunday, the guys I work with made fun of me because I was reading "Lord of the Flies." My son who's in the ninth grade is reading it, so I thought I would read it along beside him.
Talking tech: For the last two and a half years, I've been leading a project internally that looks at the point-of-sale technology we're using within the stadium. The stadium is in its seventh year, and our point-of-sale is still the original -- you can imagine how much has changed in technology since then. We've now selected the point-of-sale that we're going to adopt for the future -- we're in the final negotiation phase. It's going to allow us to do so much more. Now we'll be able to pre-sell food and beverage before people get to the venue, and same with our retail merchandise.
Must-have music: I've almost always got Spotify on, and I'm almost always listening to the W Hotels playlist. They've got some great playlists. Because I'm in soccer, the "FIFA 18" soundtrack is awesome. They do an awesome job. I found out maybe with "FIFA 15," so every year when it comes out I'm looking for their soundtrack.
Food for thought: My wife CHRISTINA makes me eat healthy, organic food, and I like that. But what I love are burnt ends. It's all about that out here, they're one of our specialties here in K.C.
First thing in the morning: My kids are old enough that they can wake themselves up now, so I take my two miniature Dachshund -- Sid and Mr. -- out on a walk.
How I unwind: I love hanging out with my wife and my two boys, I love running and I really, really love road cycling. I used to like playing soccer until I tore my Achilles, so now it's a little bit less on the impact sports.
Day in the life: We always think that less than 1% of the people who buy our jerseys are going to play soccer in them. They're wearing them to school and work and to bars. So we want the jersey to work in those contexts, from a fashion perspective. When I started in 2011, the sports licensed merchandise business was more approached as a commodity. You saw a lot of just really basic T-shirts made out of cheap fabric with really big logos on it. There wasn't a fashion side to it. So in our market, when we tried to bring fashion and sports together, we saw a lot of success.
