Baseballism: The Baseball Lifestyle Apparel Company With The Home Run Of A Story (2024)

Baseballism is a growing baseball lifestyle brand and company. (L-R) 6+4+3 = 2 tee; Interior of... [+] Scottsdale store; Live Life Like a 3-1 Count tee

Baseballism

Baseballism reminds you to rub dirt on it. Baseballism tells you to run out on the field like you’re eight-years-old and it’s time for recess.

Baseballism is a way of life, but more importantly, a company that is a growing success story.

Baseballism, the company, touts itself as premium baseball lifestyle brand. Their products target fans of the National Pastime, but many of the designs are plays on terms and lifestyle that families that have had their kids involved in youth ball, to those that follow the game at the highest levels, may only get.

Try this tee design: 6+4+3 = 2

If you don’t get it, like Baseballism likes to say, “It’s a baseball thing.”

While companies may employ a well-staffed creative team and go about focus groups to try to come up with products, Baseballism is anything but. As a small (and rapidly growing) business, Baseballism is a youthful, exuberant, deeply-tied to the game of baseball, company first, and calculated business proposition a close second.

Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, it seems the last place a company rooted in baseball would hale from. Yes, sports apparel giant Nike has its world headquarters nearby. Adidas’ North American HQ is there as well. And soon, a significant presence by Under Armour will grace the city. But Baseballism is an organic story that seems to have a more communal family vibe to its company than the massive global entities that dot the Portland area. About the only thing Nike may have remotely in common with Baseballism is their company Maxims.

Baseballism began in January 2013, but its roots came out of a baseball camp/private lessons LLC that was from 2006-2008.

“I had graduated from the University of Oregon in 2006 with a degree in education, and really didn’t know what to do with my life,” said Travis Chock, CEO of Baseballism. “I got together with some former teammates and put together camps because there wasn’t a great baseball culture due to the U of O not having a D1 baseball program at the time. The four of us had all played for the University of Oregon Club Baseball Team. Like most all baseball camps, there are the free tee-shirts that are given out, and we decided to design our own on high-quality shirts.”

Baseballism is a growing baseball lifestyle brand and company. (L-R) Historic women's baseball tee... [+] and glove leather tote; 3 up, 3 down fitted hat; Baseballism's flag man logo as statue being installed in their Atlanta store

Baseballism

The camp ran for the two years, but the tee-shirts became a hot item.

“After the camp ended, us four owners went our separate ways and got ‘real life’ jobs,” added Chock. “We would wear the camp shirts around town and people would stop and ask us where we got our tee-shirts. When we all realized the same thing was happening to us we decided we had to do something about it.”

If this was a starting point, for what is now a company on-pace to do $10-$20 million in sales this year, that quadrupled in growth from its start in 2013 when revenues were $300,000 to the following year in 2014, they likely didn't know it.

In something that strikes one as more Field Of Dreams than Wall St., the four that would become the CEO (Chock), COO (Jonathan Jwayad), CFO (Jonathan Loomis), and CLO (Kalin Boodman) had all been collegiate baseball teammates at one point or another (in a complete nod to their baseball pasts, each of their current business cards has one of their pictures from Little League on them).

The true business started out of a Kickstarter campaign, some small investment money out of their pockets, and the “shop” was Chock’s garage after he had shifted to a baseball academy in the Portland suburb of Beaverton. From there, the company brand grew through active use of several social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Around the Holidays, sales grew so much that it was no longer feasible to run the business out of Chock’s garage.

“Trucks were dropping off pallets at the house. Neighbors were starting to complain, and I could no longer walk through my garage,” said Chock.

That led to a small store on Portland’s Northeast side that was outgrown in short order. The explosive growth of the company led to their current headquarters and showroom in the city’s trendy Pearl District in Northwest Portland, not but three blocks from where Ted Williams and Bobby Doerr played some of their very first games for the visiting San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League at the Portland Beavers’ Vaughn Street Park. Given the growth of Baseballism, when asked how long he felt the company could stay in their current location before outgrowing, Chock looked around the location and said, “Maybe a year? Year-and-a-half?”

If it all sounds like seat-of-the-pants, think again. The strong relationship of the four young execs is based on knowing each other’s strengths. “It’s a very ‘baseball thing’,” said Loomis, the company’s CFO. “We know our roles, trust each other, and don’t get in each other’s way.”

Baseballism is more than an online entity. They currently have four brick-and-mortar locations in Atlanta near the new SunTrust Park of the Braves, their Portland HQ, Cooperstown directly across from the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Scottsdale, AZ near the action for Spring Training. They currently have plans to expand into Chicago and Dallas, and have started doing micro-stores for retailers that may wish to have a small Baseballism presence in their stores.

As to why the company has grown so fast, it is largely due to not operating under any debt.

“We have only two licensing agreements,” said Loomis. “One is for our logo of the batter with the flag. That’s based on Babe Ruth’s iconic swing and we license that from the Ruth family. The other is for a shirt depicting Jobu, the fictitious Voo Doo figurine immortalized in the movie ‘Major League’.”

Asked if Baseballism might pursue a licensing agreement with Major League Baseball, the company doesn’t seem in a hurry to do so.

“If you live in Atlanta, you probably already have a lot of Braves apparel,” says Loomis. “When you walk by our store, you’re not competing with that. Our products work for a family with kids going to baseball academies, fans of the minor leagues, fans of the majors,” lending itself to the baseball lifestyle category.

As to products, they range from tees and hats, to more upscale items such as purses, totes, backpacks and wallets, which are fast becoming their top-selling products.

“We thought it might be cool to do something in glove leather,” said Chock, who besides being the CEO comes up with the baseballisms for shirts and posters and is largely responsible for product design. “We made 50 of them and sold them out in under 30 seconds on Black Friday. Right then we knew we were onto something.”

As to how products are gauged as being successful, social media plays a key role, says Chock.

“We’ll put out a new design and watch how many likes it gets across social media. If it does well there, we pretty much can guarantee a good seller. Products that don’t get interest get pulled quickly, so we’re always watching how products are responding.”

At the grand opening of their new Portland headquarters, Baseballism threw a bit of party offering microbrew beer, pizza, and put a percentage of any sales for the day at the Portland store toward a group that supports local baseball called Friends of Baseball. Chock surveyed the crowd, looked at me, and said, “You know, we have a company baseballism: Live life like a 3-1 count.”

There’s little doubting that, as it was from the start, Baseballism is in a hitter’s count just waiting for the right pitch to hit out of the park.

Baseballism: The Baseball Lifestyle Apparel Company With The Home Run Of A Story (2024)
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