This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
X baseball players hit home run, maybe it's even a grand slam, with baseball bat subscriptions. This is a fun story. Two former baseball players create a bat rental service serving thousands of customers across the country. Did you know that baseball bats can be rented out? And in fact, it's often better for families with kids playing baseball to rent the bats rather than buy them.
I learned that when I was first researching this episode long ago. This is in fact a remix of one of our best stories from I think early 2018. So if you were listening back then, you might remember some about it, but we always rerecord. We also include new updates in some cases. And if you weren't around in 2018, it's a completely new story.
So in this one, it's about two baseball players. They advanced a bit further than me. I actually played little league once and I was MVP one year when I was eight. But then I didn't go on too far from that. One of these baseball players was actually drafted by a major league baseball team.
And then they created a subscription service for baseball bats serving thousands of customers all across the country. At the time we first ran this story, they were earning up to $50,000 a month. Pretty cool side hustle, right? So let's hear the details. Let's take a seventh inning stretch.
Shout out to our sponsor and then batter up. [Music]
For lifelong friends, Oscar Urena and Eric Rico, baseball was more than just a pastime. It was a way of life. Growing up together in Miami, they played on the same teams as kids. Oscar played through high school and Eric was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays.
When their playing days ended, Eric returned to Florida and started a youth baseball academy. But he noticed something troubling. Many of his players, talented as they were, felt discouraged before games even began. Competing against wealthier teams with flashy uniforms and brand new gear left them feeling at a disadvantage. Eric shared this concern with Oscar and together they brainstormed ways to level the playing field.
Their solution is a bat subscription service that allowed families to rent high quality baseball bats for an affordable monthly fee. Instead of dropping 300 to $500 up front, and by the way, yep, that's what baseball bats cost, families could pay as little as $17 a month, making the sport more financially accessible. The two friends spent months refining the business model. Prices would be based on the player's age and the type of bat with subscriptions running on a 12 month contract. Younger players would pay less while older players using higher end bats might pay $45 or more per month.
They tested the idea with 15 families at Eric's Academy and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Encouraged, they launched Bat Club USA with the goal of serving thousands of families. And in fact, instead of growing slowly, they went all in. With about $40,000 of their own savings and other investment from friends and family, they bought a lot of inventory, enough bats to serve 2,000 members. Eric sourced the bats through his professional connections, he stored them in his garage, making daily trips to the post office to fulfill orders.
Now the rest of the budget went toward building a Shopify powered website and spending about $200 a month on ads. But their biggest early marketing advantage was showing up in person, not online ads. Eric and Oscar traveled to major tournaments in Texas and Florida, where they'd set up booths, talk to players and parents, and even let kids walk away with a bat on the spot after subscribing. It wasn't just a pitch, it was instant value. And as hands-on approach worked, the kids became advocates, selling the idea to their parents and teammates.
Word of mouth spread and Bat Club USA grew quickly. Next, they ramped up those digital ads, targeting parents of young athletes through Facebook. They focused on people who followed baseball related brands and pages. And these campaigns brought their monthly recurring revenue all the way up to $50,000. But rapid growth came with challenges.
Broad attempts forced them to stop accepting prepaid cards. Tracking inventory and managing subscriptions became a logistical headache, so they built a system using Stripe and Shopify to stay better organized. They're still refining it, in fact, and see an opportunity for others to build a better solution. Now, their biggest advice to other side hustlers is to test your idea first. Don't spin big until you've validated the model.
That initial pilot with 15 families gave them the confidence to expand. As for the future, Oscar and Eric are eyeing expansion into other sports, using the same rental model to make youth athletics more accessible across the board. But for now, they're focused on helping kids show up with confidence and compete on equal footing. You could say they knocked this one out of the park. [Music]
Well, I do think it's interesting about how they tested it with, I think, 15 families and then went big.
Most of the time, if you're gonna invest a good amount of your own money, I think it's better to test a bit more widely because they were still taking a good risk there and going out to buy whatever it was, I think 2,000 bats for $300 to $500 each. But nevertheless, it's obviously worked out very well for them, a risk worth taking, it seems. Also, a subscription model is challenging enough when it's a virtual service, sending out a physical product like baseball bats and then eventually recouping a lot of the product. You have to get it back, turn it around and so on. That definitely adds a lot of complexity and logistics, but clearly they have figured it out.
So well done, guys. It's great to see that Bat Club USA is still rolling today. Listeners, let me know what you think, who you'd like to see featured. We've got a whole bunch of archive posts and stories that we're kind of dusting off and looking to feature for future episodes as well. So I always appreciate your feedback and input.
Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. That's what it's all about. I hope you are inspired and you do something about it. That's my goal, do one thing today to get closer to something you believe in. And of course, subscribe or follow.
Come back tomorrow. Much more is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
