Retail From Out of Left Field: Retail Legends

Designed for retail leaders and retail lovers alike, the RETAIL Legends podcast is designed to provoke thoughts, challenge ideas, encourage growth and, most importantly, offer leadership and insight to help retailers be both prepared and proactive to retail’s always evolving and constantly demanding needs.

For a good chunk of Americans, the slow trudge out of Winter into Spring doesn’t officially start until the first pitch of baseball on Opening Day. In that moment, whether we’re watching from our TV, from a sports bar, or from the ballpark, we are out of the blue, blustery cold and are ready to enjoy the feeling of culture of an afternoon out at the ball park.

That reality isn’t materializing this time around. 2020 is a very different year, with much of North America completely shut down as a result of COVID-19. With coronavirus spreading at an exponential rate, large gatherings are cancelled or postponed, meaning there is no baseball to commence the spring season.

This week on Retail Legends, we wanted to get our fix of opening day baseball while at the same time recognize a true Legend of Retail: the one and only Baseballism.

Baseballism isn’t just a retailer; the company is a lifestyle brand from Portland, Oregon that began as 4 friends designing goofy shirts for their youth baseball camp. That idea has sprouted into a multimillion dollar retail force to be reckoned with.

Outside of coronavirus crushing retail across the nation, right now we are living in an era many retailers call the retail-apocalypse. Thousands of stores shutter their doors every year to refocus their brick and mortar footprint and better leverage e-commerce. But Baseballism worked backwards, to their advantage; they went from an e-commerce retailer to a chain of successful brick and mortar stores.

In this episode we are going to hear how 4 lifelong friends threw retail a curveball.