Eleri Williams, 18, from Aberdare, Rhondda Cynon Taf, has built a vintage football shirt business generating more than £35,000 in profit and opened a physical shop in Cardiff, with the proceeds set to fund her law degree and leave her, in her own words, ‘debt free’ when she graduates. Eleri Williams’s vintage football shirts venture, now trading as Ballers CP in Cardiff’s Royal Arcade, began in 2023 when she was 15 and selling her father’s old shirts from a spare room during her GCSEs.
From a spare room to the Royal Arcade
What started as a way to generate pocket money for, as Eleri puts it, ‘online shopping and generally being expensive,’ grew steadily after she reinvested her early earnings into buying more stock. ‘I took a leap,’ she said, describing how a small surplus from her first sales became the seed capital for something considerably larger. Three years on, the business has expanded from an online operation to a bricks-and-mortar shop, with shirts sourced from suppliers around the world as well as locally through direct approaches and resale platforms.
According to Nation.Cymru, shirts at Ballers CP typically sell for between £20 and £200, depending on rarity and condition, giving a sense of the range of the stock Eleri curates. The top of that range reflects genuinely scarce pieces: Nation.Cymru also reports that among her rarest finds is a PSG x Louis Vuitton 2006/07 away shirt, a collaboration that commands serious collector interest. By contrast, a vintage Juventus shirt sold a few months ago for £150, and Eleri recently found what she called her personal holy grail, a Super Furry Animals-sponsored Cardiff City shirt she has declined to sell on grounds of its rarity.
Customers can request that the business attempt to source specific shirts, and Eleri said the team will try their ‘very best’ to find them. Her parents manage the shop when she has school or exams, a support structure she describes as ‘wonderful.’ ‘I’m really lucky and I’m really grateful that I’ve got such a wonderful support system around me to help me manage all the aspects of my incredibly busy life,’ she said.
Eleri Williams, vintage football shirts, and the student debt context
The financial backdrop to Eleri’s ambition is not trivial. On average, Welsh students owe £40,000 when they graduate, compared with £53,000 for students in England. Concerns around repayment terms have grown following a UK government decision to freeze the threshold at which some English graduates begin repaying loans. The Welsh government has said it will not follow that approach, and it has expressed support for a subsequent UK government move to cap interest on loans at 6%.
Against that landscape, side hustles have become a common financial strategy among students. A survey of 600 students, cited by wealth provider Aviva, found that 65% had a side hustle in the past year, compared with 38% in the 1980s. The top motivation, according to comparison site Finder, is covering the day-to-day cost of living. Eleri is clear-eyed about her own position relative to that wider picture. ‘My side hustle turned into a successful business and a store, and putting me through university,’ she said. ‘Obviously that’s not going to be the case for everyone, but it’s an effective way to fund yourself.’
She is awaiting her A-level results, expected in September, and has a place at Cardiff University to study law. ‘I know I’m financially in the position to attend the university, academically it’s just up to me now,’ she said. The shop will continue trading once term begins, though she acknowledges that opening hours ‘might have to adapt around university.’
Her favourite shirt, for what it is worth, is the vibrant blue 2002/03 Manchester United third kit, a piece she has not put up for sale. Whether it stays off the market once the demands of a law degree take hold remains, at least for now, an open question she has not publicly answered.
