From Baseball to Business: The Inspirational Journey of Dugout Mugs Founder, Randall Thompson

Welcome entrepreneurs and startups to Art of the Kickstart, the show that every entrepreneur needs to listen to before you launch. I’m your host, Roy Morejon, president and founder of Enventys Partners, the world’s only turnkey product launch company. From product development and engineering, to omnichannel marketing, we’ve helped our clients launch thousands of inventions and earn more than $1 billion in sales over the past 20 years. Each week, I interview a startup success story, an inspirational entrepreneur or a business expert in order to help you take your launch to the next level. The show would not be possible without our main sponsor ProductHype, the weekly newsletter that goes out and shows you the best inventions that just launched. Make sure to check out producthype.co and join the HypeSquad. Now, let’s get on with the show.

Welcome to another edition of Art of the Kickstart. Today I’ve got a super special guest. We are speaking with Mr. Randall, founder of Dugout Mugs. If you haven’t heard of Dugout Mugs, get out of the baseball world and take a look at these amazing products. Anyway, Randall is an amazing entrepreneur, a three-time Inc. 5,000 honoree. Next year they’re going to be celebrating their eighth anniversary. Randall, really appreciate you jumping on the show today and joining all of the listeners that are out there on the Art of the Kickstart podcast. So Randall, welcome to the show, sir.

Thanks, Roy.

So we’ve been friends for a while now. Colleagues work together. Let’s jump into this business because it’s not necessarily a crowdfunding product or innovation that I’ve spoken with most of my other founders with, but you’ve transitioned from the sports side of things to being a startup founder. So if you would, tell our audience a little bit about your background, and then maybe talk about some of the challenges and advantage of your unique career shift.

Yeah, grew up around the game of baseball, played high school ball, played little league ball and travel high school, college. Played professionally for a very short amount of time with the Blue Jays, and then got out of baseball. Just got released one day, got into coaching college baseball, and yeah, that’s where the idea for the Dugout Mug came to be. And that was the transition. I went from coaching college baseball to starting a company in my sister’s backyard and just always had an itch to be creative and start my own thing. And first one, I guess landed pretty good here.

So did you get struck with the bat? How did that moment of inspiration hit you?

There was a guy that I was coaching with, Matt Mercurio. He was the hitting coach for the college that I was at, and he was taking wooden baseball bats and he was cutting them in half, turning them into his own style of a training tool. And on a baseball bat at the top there’s a natural cupping to baseball bats. And with all the loose bat barrels that were lying around in the dugout, I picked them up, I examined them, and I thought to myself, maybe the cupping that already exists on the bat, it’s two or three inches, maybe it can go further down and you can turn it into a cool drinking mug. And I took the idea, threw it in my back pocket, so to speak, and then later brought it back out. But that’s where the concept for the bat barrel turned mug came to be was in a college baseball dugout.

Amazing. So I’ve got one here. I’ll show the YouTube audience repping my Boston Red Sox here. You can see the cup in here. Great to drink out of bottom. Thank you for the souvenir. I do use it when the Red Sox make the playoffs, which hasn’t been too recent, but either way. Randall, so let’s talk about a lot of the founders that we talk with always have moments of inspiration in bringing these ideas to market, but always it’s the execution. And I think what’s interesting for you is you really gorilla marketed this product. So if you would, in terms of talking about how you started selling some of these first Dugout Mugs by some of the things that you were doing at regional baseball games or some of the grassroots approach you took to bringing this product and putting it into consumer’s hands.

Yeah, I think a good story would be the very first time that a mug was introduced to any sort of relevant baseball audience was outside of Ferg’s Sports Bar, which is just outside of Tropicana Field where the Rays play. And I started the company in my sister’s backyard, which is in St. Pete, which is where the Rays stadium is. And in the very, very beginning, me and who’s my wife now, and my sister and my best friend, we all had mugs and we were walking around trying to show them off at the opening day for the Rays at Ferg’s Sports Bar. I guess one of the coolest stories is I was off doing something on my own. I actually didn’t have any mugs, I was just kind of holding a sign outside of Ferg’s Sports Bar trying to get people to follow us on Snapchat.

And they were inside with the mugs walking around. And I finally met up with them, and at this point I’ve been working on trying to just get one made for a year, and I had just a handful, and the excitement that was on their face, and they’re like, “You’re not going to believe this.” And I’m like, “What?” They’re like, “We can’t take more than three or four steps, and every single person is asking us about these.” I’m like, “Really?” And so at the time, I didn’t know anything about business or product or whatever it is, but looking back on that now, I realize that a good product inspires people to take action in some capacity. They want to feel it, they want grab it, they want to look at it, they want to stop and ask about it. And I think that’s a good indicator that you have a good product.

If you take it out in public and people just look at it, and they say, “Oh, okay, cool.” And then things continue to just move forward in their lives, maybe dive a little bit deeper, and maybe it’s not the right target market, but dive a little bit deeper about the product. But if you bring something to the public or you bring something to a friend or a family or just a stranger, and they want to grab it, they want to look at it, they want to stop what they’re doing to really learn about it, I think you’re probably on to something.

Absolutely. So I’m assuming those first cups didn’t have any licenses or logos on them yet, right?

No, I’ve just put popular baseball names on them. So from Wild Thing or just customized them to look like there was names on them, nothing licensed on them at that point. No.

So we always get a lot of questions about licensing, and I think you’ve done an amazing job, obviously building this brand out, but obviously the licensing that you’ve done with Major League Baseball. Talk a little bit about maybe at what stage you were at when that timing was right, and maybe some of the things that don’t get people caught at first, if you will, in terms of hurdles that you had to overcome or things that now that maybe a first-time licensee should be aware of.

We first got a license with Major League Baseball in 2018. Leading up to that, we had a license with Major League Baseball Players Association. So there’s two separate entities. There’s one that owns the rights to the logos of the Major League Baseball teams, and then there’s a Major League Baseball Players Association, and they own the rights to players’ names and signatures and likeness. So we started with the PA license, and we did really well with it. And we were at a trade show, the MLB winner meetings in 2017, and we had a 10 by 10 booth, had our mugs and MLBPA’s style stuff in the booth. And not to toot my own horn, but we just constantly just had a ton of people in our booth and to the point where the guy that was across from us, he is like, “Hey guys, thanks for last night.”

He had a clicker and he had to tell his sales manager or whatever, how many guys he’s had in his booth. He’s like, “Thanks to you guys, you had so much overflow. I had everybody in my booth.” And just a ton of people piled in and a lot of buzz about the product. And somebody from Major League Baseball stopped by the booth, and that’s where the conversation kind of started was they were interested in us potentially putting their marks on the mugs. And so that happened I think leading up into Q4 of 2018. And what happens with licensing is that you have to negotiate some sort of minimum guarantee. So essentially telling Major League Baseball that even if we sell one mug, we’re still going to pay you X amount of dollars. And there was a lot of inherent risk for us leading into the Q4 of 2018 because we had to make a business decision of how much is this going to change our business?

Because the minimum guarantee that we were committing to did not necessarily match the current trend line that we were on. So we looked at it, we said, we’ve got to make a business decision here. Is it going to make sense for us to do this? We did it and it completely changed our business. So it was a good business decision. What I know now that I would pass along is, well, I mean I guess just in general, the power of big brands. If you have the opportunity within reason, you don’t want to bankrupt your business because you commit to something too big on a minimum guarantee. But if you are thinking to yourself how much of an impact is being able to put a New York Yankees logo on one of my products, it has a huge impact. So I guess if you have the opportunity, bet on yourself, but as I always advise, make an educated decision, consider all things, don’t bet on yourself to a fault, but licensing has the ability to really change the face of your business.

Amazing. Well, I know you had mentioned some of the risk inherent to that, obviously there was some cost. Again, a lot of the companies and startup founders that we work with are always cash strapped. So was there a point in time where the business needed to take out lines of credit or raise capital to take out a loan? And if so, what advice would you have for other startups looking to secure their first round of funding?

For the most part, we were bootstrapped. I worked my off to save up enough money to quit my job and I bought 100 mugs, and then bought 500 mugs, sold 100, sold 500, ordered 1,000, sold 1,000, ordered 5,000, sold those 5,000, and then this year we’ll sell a couple hundred thousand. And I look back and I say, “Is that really the best way of doing it?” I don’t know, I kind of look back now and I say we could have probably gotten into a certain level of growth quicker with outside money. I probably wouldn’t be as bald as I am now with some outside money, but I’m sure there’s other stresses that come along with taking other people’s money. But I don’t really have any advice on raising money. I kind of just know the bootstrap way and I don’t know if that’s necessarily the best way, but it’s worked for me so far.

Right on. I know earlier you said you were out there in the parking lot with a Snapchat sign. I’m assuming your social media strategy has shifted a little bit, but I think it’s important that you’ve always maintained a fan centric approach and you’ve built this amazing diverse tribe of fans all over the world and followers and customers. How important has that community building piece been for your business model?

It should be a much bigger priority than it actually is for us, as business owners, and especially if you’re bootstrapping stuff, how transactional you get can kind of get in the way of actually growing. And you’re right, we do stuff that is good for people that love baseball, and I think it might be just in our DNA to see somebody that’s in need or just doing good things might just be in the DNA of the owners more so than the DNA of the company. So we make marketing plans for email strategy, we make marketing plans for e-commerce strategy like Facebook ads and Instagram ads, but there’s no strategy that goes into goodwill, so to speak, or creating a fan experience. I think it just kind of naturally happens, but sometimes it doesn’t get so honed in on and it doesn’t get so focused on because it’s so easy to become transactional when you’re just trying to turn $1 into $3 to continue to just push forward as a business.

Yeah, no, I can imagine. I mean, with hundreds of thousands of transactions each year now, you guys have certainly built an amazing e-commerce engine, as I mentioned, a three-time Inc. 5,000 list honoree. I know we were talking offline in terms of revenue growth, and you guys are growing triple digits every single year, so congrats to that. I know during the pandemic you guys saw remarkable revenue growth. Were there certain strategies or things that you guys went all in terms of contests or giveaways that helped grow the business as well as impact customer engagement and sales?

Are we talking during COVID years or are we talking post COVID years?

Both. But let’s talk about COVID years, because I think that was a heyday for most e-commerce entrepreneurs that were out there and now kind of the dust is settling, so to speak, in terms of true amounts of inventory that people should be ordering.

They refer to it as the COVID boom, and now they’re referring to it as the COVID hangover. And it was just a perfect storm for e-commerce. Everybody was hanging out, staring at their phone, and on top of that, just random checks were just showing up to people’s mailboxes and buying whatever the hell, they just went with it. And yeah, pretty much anything and everything that we threw out there was working, very well that we do what used to be well during COVID, it wasn’t a loss-leader. I look back on those numbers now and I go, “Man, if I would’ve known.” Because we’ll take a shot glass and we’ll say, “Just pay shipping for the shot glass and we’ll send it to you for free.” And I look back on those CPAs, and I’m like, “Good God.” If you were well positioned with inventory at that point, or you didn’t get scared in the COVID moments and downsize the team and/or, “Hey, let’s just pump the brakes on inventory a little bit.” If your knee-jerk reaction wasn’t like, “Yo, let’s chill and let’s just see what happens.”

And you actually looked at the data and Facebook’s platform that it was showing you. Oh boy. And I’m sure there’s a lot of other seasoned people that saw that and went full send. We were working with you and we did go full send, but we didn’t go full, full send. But I guess to answer your question, everything was working relatively well. It took the seasonality out of our business during COVID. And now post COVID, what we’re attempting to do, and we’re doing a fairly decent job of it, is we’re trying to diversify off of social media ads ever so slightly, get a little bit more of a retail footprint. And we recently made a purchase of a competitor that had a really big TikTok audience, and we’re going to repurpose that TikTok audience to hopefully reach organic baseball fans and indirectly funnel people into sales. So I don’t even know at this point if I’ve answered your question, but that’s my answer to maybe not even your question.

No, all good. I mean, yeah, certainly, I think during the pandemic, it was a heyday, if you will, for a lot of the e-comm businesses out there. And I think we’ve had many conversations of how do we stop the ad train, how do we get off spending so much money to acquire these customers? And whether it’s the community building aspect, the free plus shipping or the social media side of things in terms of growing and engaging the audience there and just letting things naturally come into the conversation, which I think you can now do when there’s millions of Dugout Mugs out there in the world and people are putting them up on their bookcases or using them for every game or whatever the case may be, other people are now telling your story for you. It’s more of a measure of how do you give those brand evangelists the right tools to tell the story to bring people back into the business, right?

Yeah, definitely top of mind is how to turn customers into people that just consistently and constantly talk about us, and/or want to come back and make a purchase within a tight window. Definitely something that’s always trying to be solved for is that, but man, for whatever reason, that seems like the hard part. And I think that seems like the hard part because it’s never really focused on, it’s always like, “Hey, how do we feed this engine over here to get more customers? And how do we get more content for that? How do we write better copy for that? How do we maybe get off of Facebook and go over to Pinterest or how do we do this or this or this?” And it’s never like, “Hey, let’s pause and let’s really just write down and put into place what is actually going to turn one customer and they’re going to go out and they’re going to get us three more customers.” There’s almost never any conversation that goes on about that. And that’s probably the problem, is that what you don’t talk about, you’re not going to ever solve for.

Yep. Well, we’re talking about it here. So action [inaudible 00:19:14] ways, not only for you and I, but for all the listeners of the show. Well, Randall, I’d love to know what you’re most excited about at work and at Dugout Mugs right now. What’s keeping you up at night, besides your newborn?

What am I excited about? I’m excited to get out of Q3. I’m ready to, this time of the year is always just over indexing into inventory and then just worrying that the inventory is not going to sell. And I don’t want to wish away days, but if I could, I’m excited to get into Q4 because I want to see how that all shakes out. And like I said, we’re trying to diversify off of Facebook and trying to get into retail. I’m excited to see how this continues to take shape. Every time we go to a trade show, we’ve identified that gifting trade shows are very, very profitable whenever we go. I’m excited to see how that continues to shape itself out. Every time we go to a trade show, what it costs us to go, it’s a 20 x return. Nothing else in our business is like that. And it kind of, the conversation is how many trade shows could we go to before we start seeing that diminish? And I’m excited to see how that shapes out.

Amazing. Well, Randall, we’ve made it to the launch round where I’m going to rapid fire a handful of questions at you.

Oh, shit.

You good to go?

Yeah, I think I am. Let’s do it.

All right. So in the end of the day, what inspired you to be an entrepreneur?

God.

All right. If you could meet with any entrepreneur throughout history, who would you want to have a game of catch with?

What was the question?

If you could meet with any entrepreneur throughout history, alive or dead, who would you want to have a game of catch with?

Probably McConaughey.

Okay. What would be your first question for him?

Maybe I could probably just Google this if I really want to know it, but for the sake of just not thinking on this too long, how did he get involved in Wild Turkey? I think he’s Wild Turkey’s CMO or something like that. I don’t know. Something crazy, but yeah. What involvement does he have with Wild Turkey?

A lot of celebs in the alcohol game these days.

Yeah, I know. Well, consumables and alcohol. Alcohol consumables, it’s bulletproof.

Yep. All right, so layups here. Favorite baseball player.

Of all time?

Yeah.

Oh man. I guess this isn’t a layup. I’ll say David Eckstein.

Eck. Nice. Yeah. Pull me out [inaudible 00:22:03]-

The X Factor.

Indeed. All right, another lay for you. Favorite baseball movie?

Ooh, I got to go to Sandlot.

Yeah. You better go to Sandlot on this one.

I have to, right? Yeah.

All right. Any book that you would recommend to our startup entrepreneurial founders?

No, don’t read books.

Okay.

Yeah. I haven’t read a book. I don’t know, maybe ever in my life. I think the problem with books is… You’re familiar with the Dunning Kruger effect, I assume, where the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know anything. That’s the way I feel about reading business books. The more I read them, the more I go, “Oh man, I don’t know.” And then the more I doubt myself. So yeah, just stay dumb and then just get dirty. It would be my-

Stay blissfully ignorant to all the content that’s out there in a hardcover book. Okay. Noted. All right, give me this then. What do you think are the top three skills that every entrepreneur needs to be successful?

Okay, cool. I think you need to be likable. I think it’s grossly underestimated how far likable people can go in this world. Even if you have no skills and you’re likable, you’ve got a chance. I think you got to be gritty, be willing to grind through hard times. And hard times are always best when put in perspective. It’s not really that hard to find something that is much harder compared to that. So gritty, likable, you got to be a problem solver. You got to be able to look at things and see the solution and not dwell on the problem. So I would say those three things. I don’t even know if problem solving is a skill, and I don’t think grit is either, and I don’t think likable is. So I didn’t really answer your question, but those are three qualities of a person that I think could have a high success rate in entrepreneurship, grit, likableness, and problem solver.

I’ll take those characteristics all day. Absolutely. All right. Final two questions. Where do you see Dugout Mugs in the next three years?

On the moon? Yeah.

Well, I think [inaudible 00:24:38] on the moon. Come, go.

Hey, do you think they actually landed on the moon?

Yes.

1969.

Oh, you’re giving me a date. Like the first moon landing?

Yeah.

This is my podcast, not yours.

Okay, my bad. Yeah, but-

Yes, I do believe that they landed on the moon in 1969.

There’s viral stuff I know-

Conspiracy theorists, come on out, let’s go.

Buzz Aldrin is like there’s videos of him just kind of clueing in people that he never did. But where do I see Dugout Mugs in three years? I don’t know. Hopefully thriving. And I think it would be cool if Dugout Mugs continues to put a dent in the baseball space and more and more people recognize the Dugout Mug name, I think it would be kind of cool to maybe try to license out the Dugout Mug name to relevant verticals. I don’t know exactly what that looks like, but just kind of something that I’m thinking about.

Amazing. All right, last question, Randall, you’re doing great. In your perspective, what does the future of e-commerce look like?

It’s the future. I think we kind of got a little bit of glimpse of it during COVID by the dip. I think it’s the future, the short answer, I think it’s the future. And isn’t there some sort of crazy stat that only 11% of commerce is through e-commerce and then the rest? Yeah. So that’s just not going to be the case in a decade. So I think that the more that people can learn the e-commerce landscape, the better off they’re going to be in the future, because I think that’s where everything’s going.

Absolutely. Well, Randall, this is the end, but this is your opportunity to directly give the audience your pitch, tell people what you’re all about, where they should go, and why they should be checking out Dugout Mugs.

Yep. Go to dugoutmugs.com, drive down my Q4 CPA by just paying full price. You’re going to get a little popup and it’s going to offer you some sort of discount based on email. Don’t do that. Just exit out of that. Just pay full price. Give me that nice juicy, gross margin. And after you do that, follow us on Instagram or Facebook, go to the post that was just last posted and tag 20 of your friends. And yeah, that’s my pitch. I’ve realized that if you tell yourself you’re going to do 30 pushups, you’ll only do 30 pushups. So I just did a really big ask there. So maybe one person will go on and buy a mug for 30% off.

Well, I hope they do. But Randall, obviously really appreciate you being a guest. Audience, thanks for tuning in. Make sure to visit artofthekickstart.com for actually a special discount code that Randall’s going to give me after the show to be used only on dugoutmugs.com. And of course, visit the site for the notes’ transcript links to dugoutmugs.com. And of course, big shout out to our crowdfunding podcast sponsor over at ProductHype, the top newsletter for new products that just launched. Randall, thank you so much for being a guest on Art of the Kickstart.

Yeah, thanks Roy. And did you buy that URL? That’s a nice URL there, artofthekickstart.com.

You know it.

Later.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you for tuning into another amazing episode of Art of the Kickstart, the show about building a better business, life and world with crowdfunding. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode as much as I did, make sure to show us some love by rating us and reviewing us on your favorite listening station, whatever that may be. Your review really helps other founders and startups find us so they can improve their craft and achieve greater success like you. And of course, be sure to visit artofthekickstart.com for all the previous episodes. And if you need any help, make sure to send me an email at info@artofthekickstart.com. I’d be glad to help you out. Thanks again for tuning in. I’ll see you next week.