High school sports are a big deal in many towns. And they also mean big money, says Kent McKeaigg, CEO of OrderMyGear.
McKeaigg would know. He grew up watching his father make a living off of the fan gear that parents, athletes, coaches and other community members would buy to show their avid support for the local high school football team, diving club or marching band.
But he also saw the headaches his father would get because of the complicated, custom ordering process that group orders paid for individually required. For instance, one issue was local community members wanted gear that the high school wouldn’t sell. A proud mom, for example, might want a custom fleece with her son’s nickname and jersey number on it. To fill this need, his father collected specialty group orders from students, parents, coaches, the local restaurant owner—you name it. He’d then have to collect the cash and checks for the orders and ensure they were correctly delivered to each individual.
“My dad sold sporting goods for teams in Northwest Oklahoma,” McKeaigg says. “He generally tried to avoid big group orders that were paid for individually. One day I remember he came back with $13,000 worth of orders on Excel spreadsheets and I thought, ‘Gosh if he could just put that all online it would be so much easier.’”
Communities wanted customized apparel and gear and it was very cumbersome to manage the paperwork and order flow across screen print and embroidery, sweatpants and hoodies, McKeaigg says.
To alleviate the headaches, McKeaigg launched a side project which has now turned into OrderMyGear.com. The company offers tools that improve the process for placing group orders that are paid for individually.
Here’s how it works: sales representatives like McKeaigg’s father call on local teams, leagues, businesses or any group that might want an ample amount of a variety of customized gear, such as a Girl Scout troop, booster club or student council. The organization then selects the gear they want to include in an online store. OrderMyGear, through the sales representative or the distributor the salesperson works for, creates and hosts a temporary online store for the organization that is typically open for one to two weeks where consumers can place their orders and pay for them. The sales representative or distributor has the relationships with the brands such as Adidas, Under Armor or Nike to order the custom products. Consumers visit the site and place their orders while the URL is active. The organization can customize the shop in a few ways—for example—to save on shipping fees all orders could be shipped to one Girl Scout leader or coach.
“We’re the platform that sits in the middle and that allows salespeople like my dad to make a lot more sales,” McKeaigg says. He says it takes about 15 minutes to set up the URL for the temporary online store. OrderMyGear works with about 2,500 distributors and McKeaigg says that number is growing every month. Last year consumers bought $200 million worth of customized gear using OrderMyGear.com across more than 100,000 group stores. The vendor charges a 3.5% service fee of sales for each shop. It also offers volume discounts, McKeaigg says. “We are in the process of discussing a different pricing structure for large volume stores, but we have not made any decisions yet. We recognize there is a need there,” he says.
When a customer pays for the product, the money, minus OrderMyGear’s fees, goes directly to the distributor or salesperson, who is responsible for paying the brand, such as Nike or Under Armor, McKeaigg says.
The best candidate for OrderMyGear is large group orders that are paid for by many individuals. Products are also usually less expensive as a group orders more of one type. “No (manufacturer) wants to screen print one order at a time,” McKeaigg says.
McKeaigg says OrderMyGear has been warmly received at trade shows and conferences and that athletic brands are also beginning to approach him seeking to work together.
“I had a booster club mom in Dallas tell me she went to a brand with $30,000 in a shoe box for custom orders,” McKeaigg says. “We have coaches and other decision makers coming to us saying ‘Hey, I need apparel.’”
OrderMyGear is actively recruiting sales representatives and distributors, McKeaigg says. “Anybody selling product to groups—we recruit them. We’ve had individual dealers do over a million [in sales] through our platform. My dad never could have done that. And we feel like there’s a ton of opportunity in the market to sell more product. It’s not just the high school band that wants gear but the marching band and the jazz band.”
In April, OrderMyGear, which is based in Dallas and has 80 employees, raised $35 million from Susquehanna Growth Equity. It plans to use the cash in a few ways, including for technology that can help distributors and sales representatives identify more groups who would use the service, communications to convey the “limited time” message and encourage more purchases, and to help salespeople and distributors in the process of closing down an online store and delivering products.
It’s also working on building out an enterprise unit that would work with school districts and principals as wells as non-school leagues and corporations.
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