Blues managing director Ian Milne says Town have received great feedback from fans regarding the new home and away kits launched earlier this month, despite a potentially controversial switch to blue shorts from the traditional white.
"The feedback that we’ve got is great,” he said. "There are certain custom kits we can have from adidas.
"And in this case we were more interested in the chevron design, which I thought was fairly adventurous, slightly retro, and it’s gone down extremely well.
"I think people need to see it live because I don’t think it comes out well on the picture. There’s nothing wrong with the photography, it’s just it needs context.
"That design came with blue shorts and I think the balance is right. The difference in blues works quite well too.
"There aren’t many choices with a blue kit and it’s a struggle. Having gone for the collars, that was a great idea, what are we going to do next? It’s not as easy as people think.
"The white away kit has again gone down very well. Again, it’s got adidas all over it, it’s got the quality.”
Town recently announced that season ticket prices would be frozen at the early bird rate after seeing a drop in sales.
Milne says that with the club still to start their attempts to woo back non-renewing fans by contacting them personally, they already seeing some returning to the fold.
"That was something we felt we ought to do,” Milne added. "Particularly with regard to performances because we ended up seventh, we took that decision to allow people to think twice and come back.
"And there are nice early signs that they’re coming back. The percentage that we thought we were at we aren’t, we’re improving on it.
"I think we will get more back around the Euros, they will see some good signings coming through and hopefully they’ll scratch their heads and think ‘Maybe it wasn’t so bad, they did get seventh’.”"
Meanwhile, he says he hopes supporters have noticed an improvement in the concourse catering provided by Centerplate, who took on the role last August.
He admits that there were teething problems but has had more positive feedback recently: "At the last fans’ forum, which was at the last home game, they all congratulated us about Centerplate.
"I think we had teething problems going in with Centerplate and we were having weekly reviews with them at that stage, we knew we’d need to for the first three months.
"They knew where they went wrong and they’ve now dealt with those and, as I say, the fans’ forum came to us and said that it’s been good, much better.
"There were complaints but they reacted and they initially had the problem of, which I hoped they wouldn’t, of getting staff to work a half day for 23 days in the year. I appreciate that because we tried as well. But they really got that one right.”
Milne says the Blues continue to be open to Portman Road being sponsored, but no one has yet come forward.
"No ground sponsorship, there are various additional corporate sponsors that we will be having on board but no ground sponsorship. We’re still interested though,” he added.
"We’ve tried very hard to get more concerts on here as well, but we have to compete with things like the O2, Colchester United as well, and it’s a case of which bands are touring and I don’t think it’s been a fantastic year this year for bands touring. It’s supply and demand on that.”
Following yesterday’s Portman Cup match the club will be starting work to refurbish the pitch today.
"We’ll have a major renovation on the main pitch here,” he added. "We won’t go for a [full reconstruction], that’s a million, we’d rather spend that on the squad.
"It’s not a bad pitch really, compared to some. We’re doing a large scrape off and reseed, as we’ve done for the last couple of years.
"We missed out one year because of a concert and we did notice it. But it’s lasted very well and we consistently get good points for it from the Football League.”
Photos: ITFC