Free text for 30 francs: what Swiss law leaves to the club

Tuesday afternoon in a Swiss club shop. In front of Reto sits an order he does not want to wave through. Home shirt, custom flock, a name he does not recognize, and 88 in the number field.

Reto is not sure it is allowed. But a print is quick, and afterwards somebody wears it into the stadium.

Reto is invented. The field such orders come from is not. At FC St.Gallen, for example, the 26/27 home-shirt page carries a selector headed "Flock". Its three values read "Ohne", "Spieler", "Individuell": none, player, custom. Behind "Spieler" sits the squad, 29 entries, each marked "+ CHF 30.00".

Choose "Individuell" and an empty name field opens, capped at 14 characters, with a number list from 1 to 99 beside it. The shirt itself is CHF 100.00.

The field is open, and no Swiss statute says what may go into it. Neither the Code of Obligations nor the data protection act nor the criminal code takes that decision away from the club. Reto looks anyway, starting with other shops.

Four shops, the same open field

Servette FC uses French for the same option on its product page: "Joueur" and "Personnalisé", both at +CHF 30.00. Four shops, four words, one price band:

The price band is narrow: 25 to 30 francs, a quarter to a third of the shirt price. Four shops are not a market, though. For a dataset of our own we opened the shops of all 22 clubs in the top two Swiss leagues on July 18, 2026. Thirteen ran a personalization configurator. We recorded technology, not rules.

On returns the terms are clear. St.Gallen's terms and conditions rule out any exchange right for goods made to customer specification. Servette's refund policy says: "Le droit de rétractation ne s'applique pas aux articles personnalisés".

Both configurators cap the length only: 14 characters, 12 at Servette. On content, none of the pages we read carries anything. The field counts characters. It does not read them.

The shops give Reto no answer. That leaves the statutes, and the first one bites at the exchange counter.

Withdrawal right: online shops are not on the list

Swiss law has a withdrawal right, but not for online orders. Art. 40b of the Code of Obligations lists the places exhaustively. Named are the workplace, living quarters, public transport and streets, a promotional excursion event, and the telephone. An online shop is not on that list.

Parliament left online commerce out on purpose. In its opinion of August 24, 2022 on motion 22.3476, the Federal Council records that Parliament declined in 2014 to create such a right. Providers may grant one by contract. The National Council rejected the motion on June 7, 2023, as the parliamentary record for 22.3476 shows.

So the published exclusion of personalized goods excludes no statutory right. It states the shop's own terms. A club that replaces a wrongly printed shirt anyway does so as goodwill, and the cost stays with the club.

The second statute bites earlier than any exchange: at the moment the data is passed on.

Data protection: criminal provisions for private persons

A requested name, a number and a delivery address are personal data. The revised Swiss data protection act aims its criminal provisions at private persons. Art. 60, 61, 62 and 63 each threaten a fine of up to CHF 250,000. Art. 61 lit. b catches whoever hands processing to a processor without meeting the conditions of Art. 9 para. 1 and 2.

Only Art. 64 para. 2 lets the authority fine the business instead, up to CHF 50,000. Even that applies only where identifying the responsible individuals would be disproportionate, as the act on Fedlex sets out.

For a managing director that is a different starting position from a corporate fine. Passing personalization data to a print partner is a disclosure to a processor, which belongs in the contract review.

The third statute should give Reto a plain answer.

Criminal law: what the offense requires

Art. 261bis of the Swiss Criminal Code covers discrimination and incitement to hatred. The offense requires an outward act, on grounds of race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. The article lists five acts:

• publicly inciting hatred or discrimination,
• publicly disseminating demeaning ideologies,
• organizing or taking part in propaganda actions,
• publicly demeaning people, or denying and grossly trivializing genocide,
• refusing a service intended for the general public.

A sign on its own does not meet it. The Federal Council described the current position on June 19, 2026. A person is punished today only if they use a National Socialist, racist, violence-glorifying or extremist symbol and promote the matching ideology at the same time. On the same day the Council adopted the dispatch for an act banning National Socialist symbols in public, with a fine of CHF 200.

Numbers are treated separately. The Federal Council's media release says: "Einschlägige Zahlencodes will der Bundesrat jedoch aufgrund der kritischen Rückmeldungen vom Verbot ausnehmen. Dies weil sie mehrdeutig und nicht auf den ersten Blick als Symbole des Nationalsozialismus erkennbar sind". They are to be exempted as ambiguous and not recognizable at first sight.

The bill is with Parliament, not in force. Neither the offense as it stands nor the bill makes the number as such punishable. That is the wording, not legal advice.

Three times the decision lands back with Reto, and three times it needs a shape.

House rules need three parts

Today Reto decides the 88, on a Tuesday afternoon, between two other jobs. Next time somebody else may decide differently.

In our audit of 66 club shops, exactly 8 described on their own pages when they refuse a print. For the others the rule is not on the page. That does not mean there is none. It means nobody can look it up.

Three parts turn a house rule into a process:

• a check that finds the uncertain case instead of stopping ordinary surnames,
• a hold that really stops the order until a person has decided,
• a record that carries the decision afterwards.

A hard blocklist is none of them. It catches an ordinary surname because a fragment sits inside it, and lets through a spelling nobody anticipated. One costs a sale, the other the club's name.

Between the two sits the case that matters: the entry nobody is sure about. Reto's order is one of those, and it needs a person, quickly.

The hold is what a club underestimates most easily. It only helps if it bites before the press. Once the file is with the print partner, the question is closed.

The record decides the dispute at the counter. It has to carry what was ordered, who decided, and on what ground. A screenshot and a staff member's memory do not.

None of the three is software. It is a decision the club writes down once, so that the same case ends the same way in November as in August. That works on paper, but behind the name field it belongs in the process itself.

Pinned, held, logged: behind the field

kit.ink does exactly those three things behind the product page.

Weeks after the purchase a supporter stands at Reto's counter with the wrong print, with no withdrawal right and no claim under the shop terms. What was actually in the field?

At add-to-cart kit.ink pins the exact jersey edition, the prints, the size and the images and fonts used. The record cannot drift when the catalog moves on. What is pinned is the input. At release the print files come from it. What the heat press then does with them is outside that record.

Once name, number and address go to the print partner, a delivery note shows what was ordered, not who read it. At kit.ink a production system can retrieve a personalization only once its state allows it. Every attempt is recorded, the allowed one and the refused one.

The timeline shows the club's staff everything that happened:

• every state change,
• every refused attempt,
• every system that read it or was denied,
• and who acted.

It is not for the supporter at the counter. The permanent trail carries no cleartext: it records the rule, its family and its severity. The wording itself sits in a separate record that can be deleted, and automatic deletion after a period is not in operation today.

That leaves the check and the hold. An uncertain name or number is held for a human decision instead of being rejected outright. While it is held, no production system can read it.

The reviewer sees the value, the rule that fired, its severity, the channel and how long it has waited. Every decision needs a reason from a fixed list, the approval too. A wording refused before is put up again at once for the same club, with the earlier decision attached. A remembered approval is recorded and releases nothing by itself.

The rule itself cannot go live on a hunch. It runs quietly first, and only measured evidence from real traffic lets a person switch it on.

The limit belongs here too. kit.ink checks text: names, numbers and free input. The word lists cover eighteen languages, German, English and French among them, with uneven depth and never complete coverage. It does not read printed shapes or images, and which rules apply was decided by a person beforehand.

On the product page itself, none of this shows.

Fourteen characters, thirty francs, one house rule

At FC St.Gallen, "Individuell" still opens an empty field for 14 characters.

Reto still has his order with the 88. Three statutes, three times the same answer. What can change sits behind the field: a check that fires, a hold that holds, and a record that carries the decision.

Written down and logged, the decision can be shown afterwards, to the supporter at the counter and to anyone who asks. Then Reto decides by a rule his colleague will know tomorrow as well.

Free text for 30 francs is not a legal product. It is a house rule with a price tag, and that deserves the same care as a contract.

---

To walk through your own path from the name field to the heat press, start with a short, no-obligation conversation about your setup.

All cited pages were accessed on August 6, 2026, except the Criminal Code and the Federal Council media release (September 22, 2026).