THE co-founder of the company behind the £25 million Rangers Football Club kit contract has hailed the launch of the team’s away jersey after selling 30,000 in the first weekend of its launch.

The white Castore away kit was worn for the first time during the Ibrox club’s 1-0 win over Aberdeen and is believed to have been the best opening day of the season for online sales in more than 15 years.

It was also the first time a Rangers jersey was launched exclusively online. The home jersey sold 50,000 in 36 hours when it was launched in July.

Tom Beahon, 30, and his brother Phil, 27 founded the Liverpool-based Castore which now also has tennis champion Sir Andy Murray as a shareholder

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Tom Beahon said: “We are really happy with the performance.

“We obviously got a good insight or indicator as to just how large and passionate the fan base and community for Rangers Football Club is when we launched the home strip in July.

“But you are always slightly nervous about how the away jersey would do in comparison.

“It is a really nice design, really high quality product, so we thought the raw material was there for it to do well but obviously when you actually see the impact of it and how many fans are purchasing it and the feedback from the fans it validates what we hoped and expected to be the case, so very nice indeed.

“It’s obviously great that we got a good result at the weekend as well.

“We sold about 30,000 over the weekend which is a good number.”

He added: “The first two strips have launched and been very well received. Equally I’m looking to the future as well and we’ve got a number of additional product launches in the pipeline that hopefully the fans will get equally excited about.

“What I’ve said direct to the Rangers fans is that Castore is not Nike, it’s not Adidas, we know we can’t go head-to-head with those guys and do the same as what those guys do and win, but they are far bigger brands than us.”

He said: “Where we do believe we can win is by being more creative, more innovative, working harder to find different ways of doing things from those guys.”

The Rangers Store at Ibrox will open on Thursday, August 6 ahead of Rangers' UEFA Europa League fixture away at Bayer Leverkusen.