Website Closers® presents a highly unique eCommerce Business offering
Baseball Subscription Boxes to the over 15.6 million amateur baseball players around the United States. Each box is unique and usually has 6-8 items, including gear, snacks, training aids, accessories, and apparel.
With the youth sports industry now including an estimated 7.8 million kids, each one with parents spending healthy amounts of disposable income on a wide variety of products, this recurring revenue model has done exceptionally well converting parents into loyal customers of their 60+ SKUs. They also have their own brand of sports equipment. Initially, a side project that the owner launched in 2015, it grew to a full-scale business in 2018.
The offers have become so popular today that the company is shipping
6,000+ packages per month. Roughly 89% of customers are long-term subscribers and over 30% of new customers come from word-of-mouth
referrals. The company also enjoys high organic traffic rates from their social media platforms, which include 151,000+ followers on Instagram and 80,000 on Tik Tok. They now see 62,000+ unique monthly visitors. The company has started scaling, recently introducing Soccer Boxes. NO sport is out of bounds – making scale achievable in so many different directions, but with over 4 million youth soccer players registered with over 9,000 US-based clubs, there is incredible opportunity just with Soccer alone.
As customers have come to appreciate the convenience, cost savings and gift giving opportunity associated with receiving monthly, half-yearly or yearly auto-delivery service of niche items, Subscription boxes have become one of the hottest trends in eCommerce today. Surprise items in the boxes and attractive packaging add to the appeal of these products, which are increasingly popular in a wide range of industries, including food and beverage, personal grooming and hygiene, books, pet care, beauty items, and health and fitness. Businesses love the recurring revenues that enable them to focus on scale opportunities for their brand. Basically, it’s the gift that keeps giving the whole year.
No surprise, then, that the subscription box market is projected to grow from $22.7billion in 2021 to $65 billion by 2027, a 18.3% compound annual growth rate. Youth sports is a growing field for this. The youth sports industry has an estimated 60 million kids participating in it, and estimates show that sports families spend an average of $693 per child per sport annually.
With a product that appeals to both parents and their children, this brand is a great example of how to launch a profitable subscription box. This brand went from a hobby to a profitable business. The company’s founder started this site as a side project to pay his way through minor league baseball, but the owner quickly discovered that the boxes had enormous appeal to his target audience and it went full-time in 2018. Their youth sports box contains baseball gear, training aids, apparel, snacks and accessories, delivered on a monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly basis. Discounts are available for pre-purchasing items.
The brand also has a quarterly box of soccer gear and related accessories, which members receive every quarter. Discounts on this one are also available.
As the first youth sports box on the market, the company has limited competition in this niche field. The company has grown substantially and have become an instantly recognizable brand in baseball, but it could be expanded into virtually any other youth sport.
Their subscription boxes comprise 97% of sales by volume, and about 45% of their members are 3- month pre-paid subscribers. Their subscription boxes have an Average Order Value of $113.40 to $130.32. Sales remain steady throughout the year, with peaks during the holidays and during baseball season from March to the end of July.
Referrals drive plenty of sales. The appreciation that customers have for this brand has turned their customers into their best marketing tool. 30% of their new customers come from word-of-mouth referrals from a family or friend. Their No. 1 acquisition source is their existing customer base. A second major source for them has been social media, and the brand has a strong presence there, with 151,000+ Instagram followers and 12,000+ on Facebook. Along with PPC ads on social media, the brand is getting 60.6% of customers through Facebook and Instagram, 20.9% through TikTok and 18.3% from Google and YouTube.
The company is very active on social media and works consistently to grow followers and engagement. They are also driving sales by working with influencers on their social media accounts and through their viral content creation.
The addition of 100,000+ subscribers in their email database provides this brand with additional opportunities to grow through an email newsletter that could be used for not only marketing purposes but upsells as new subscription boxes are introduced.
Organic content creation, giveaways, email lead generation, influencer and affiliate marketing programs and SMS text messaging are also used to drive sales.
The company is moving forward on scaling. There are plans now for taking their growth playbook and applying it to all major youth sports, considering that 80% of children 14 and younger play more than one sport. The company launched a subscription box last November that focuses on soccer, and there are opportunities to do the same for numerous other youth sports.
Most of the sports equipment sold in the boxes is the company’s own brand, helps drive strong margins for the business. These products are made exclusively and could also be sold individually on through wholesale channels and on Amazon, an additional expansion of sales from their Shopify website.
The current owner employs three full-time workers who focus on logistics, customer service, content creation and videography. Orders are fulfilled daily through their 3pl partner, and they currently ship about 6,000 orders per month. The company stocks $500,000 in inventory to keep up with orders, with inventory orders placed on a monthly basis.
This brand has thousands of parents and athletes who buy a mystery box of baseball gear on a recurring basis, and they manufacture all the training aids used in their baseball, soccer and Bandit sports brands, making them a private label for appealing sporting goods. Their growth potential is enormous.
