We recently connected with Tarek Pertew and have shared our conversation below.

Tarek, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

When you turn something you love into a career, it can be a double-edged sword. For me, I played in recreational soccer leagues, an industry gatekeeper for my social life and physical activity. Being a dedicated player, I was able to understand where the product was wanting. This is ultimately what triggered the impetus to organize a league myself. What I didn’t fully appreciate was how much enjoying the fruits of another’s labor was key to enjoying sport mindfully. Instead, I must focus constantly on the experience of those around me and where the product needs improvement. It has made it really difficult to fully enjoy our tournaments and other events where the community is truly benefitting from the setup and can be fully present in their enjoyment.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Tarek Pertew. Spent my childhood in NE Tennessee before moving to New York after my parents divorced. I went to college in Virginia at UVA and returned to New York full time to work in Manhattan as an apparel buyer for Lord & Taylor. A few years into my stint in a corporate gig, I started my first company, which was a networking platform and event series for college grads for employment purposes.

In 2011, I started NYC Footy as a side project to play in a league that fulfilled the vision of professionalism at the recreational level that I envisioned. During the decade that followed, I was mostly focused on building an HR Technology company called Uncubed until its sale in 2021, at which point I went full time to grow NYC Footy.

NYC Footy is currently the nation’s largest adult soccer league, at any level, providing a safe and organized place for anyone 18+ to play soccer, no matter their skill.

As a form of social fitness, recreational soccer provides a very unique outlet for meeting new people from all walks of life, exercise, and be a critical outlet for those that need it. In short, a physical and mental wellness outlet that humans need, whilst also providing a vibrant opportunity to have an active social life.

In a world where most businesses push to be a “net positive” offering (meaning their are some negatives to providing the product or service), NYC Footy is nearly all positive and it’s a privilege to be able to grow this type of business.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

It’s pretty clear what type of content our community engages with. Once we identified that, we over indexed on content that we knew would drive engagement and would double down by running ads towards that post as well. This not only drove new users, but helped grow our online social following.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

Just this year we launched our own sports apparel line called Paloma. We had been previously sourcing our jerseys through strategic partnerships with the likes of Puma and Umbro. However, once it was clear that saving a single dollar per jersey would be enough to help us hire a new full time employee, we began taking steps to manufacture our own kits.

We reached out to friends that ran their own clothing lines as well as friends in the footballing world and those efforts helped us land an extraordinary manufacturer based in Egypt that helped us save money and provide an even better product. The direct referral from a very trusted and influential source is what filled us with confidence that this producer would work hard to earn our trust and businesses. That is exactly what happened and we are entering our second year with this manufacturer and doubling our order from last year.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nycfooty.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nycfootyofficial
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nycfooty
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nycfooty
• Twitter: https://www.x.com/nycfooty
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/nycfooty