Volleyball England’s second-hand kit initiative was launched in September 2025 ahead of the 2025/26 season. KitRound quietly solves a very loud problem: every player has a drawer full of perfectly good kit that is going nowhere. We paid for our own order, used the service like any other customer and came away thinking this is a model other national governing bodies and university systems should seriously consider.
What KitRound actually is
KitRound is a dedicated marketplace for pre-loved sports kit, working with governing bodies, clubs and charities to keep kit in play instead of in landfill. Through Volleyball England’s partnership, players and clubs can:
- Donate unwanted but wearable kit via collection points and “kitbins” at major events, starting with the U18 Super Series in October 2025.
- Buy that kit back through a dedicated VolleyStore section on KitRound’s site at cut-price rates.
Items range from shoes and socks to hoodies, tracksuits and volleyball-specific kit, sourced from across the community. In its first season (2025/26), donations and sales raised a four-figure sum for a new Volleyball England hardship fund, diverted 570kg of waste from landfill, saved 2,200 litres of water and avoided 572kg of CO₂ emissions.
How it worked in practice
Service Break has sampled the service and, so far, it is a 10/10 experience from the user side:
- The website is easy to navigate and search, with volleyball-specific stock clearly labelled and filtered.
- Shipping was fast, with our order sent via Royal Mail 48 and arriving within the expected window, securely packaged.
- The clothing was pristine. We paid £9 for a Volleyball England fleece jacket with free shipping, and it arrived in genuinely excellent condition, closer to “new old stock” than “second hand”.
For students, that pricing matters. A sub-£10 fleece that still looks and feels official is the difference between turning up in a random hoodie and actually feeling part of the sport’s visual language.
Why this matters beyond one partnership
KitRound and Volleyball England are doing three important things at once:
- Lowering cost barriers for players who want appropriate kit without a full retail spend.
- Extending the life of existing clothing, which matters in a sector where synthetic fabrics and frequent rebrands can carry a heavy environmental footprint.
- Creating a simple template that other governing bodies, leagues and universities can replicate with their own “pre-gamed” stock.
KitRound already partners with organisations like the Youth Sport Trust, Birmingham County FA and the Royal Yachting Association, showing how quickly the model can scale across sports. If football, athletics, basketball or university sport structures follow suit, second-hand kit could move from being an individual workaround to a normal part of how sports systems look after their communities.
Circulating kit, not just content
The strength of KitRound and Volleyball England’s approach is that it is infrastructure, not just messaging. There is a clear route for old kit to find new owners, and a clear benefit for the sport every time it happens. For a lot of student athletes and club players, that kind of quiet, practical support will matter more than any campaign slogan.
Visit the Store here.
