How do you make the best product? You start with the problem. On this 151st episode of the E-Comm Show, Andrew Maff interviews Jake Hanson, COO of Guardian Sports.  This approach has led Guardian Sports to become a leader in the sports industry, with their products being trusted and used by major organizations such as the NFL.

In this episode, Jake emphasizes the importance of understanding and defining the problem before creating a solution. By consistently being on the lookout for new problems to solve, Guardian Sports stays ahead of the competition and delivers tried and tested solutions to their customers based on real-life problems.If you're looking to improve your products impact this episode is a must-listen…

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Surviving and Thriving in the Beverage Industry

Andrew Maff and Jake Hanson

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST: AndrewMaff.com  |  Twitter: @AndrewMaff | LinkedIn: @AndrewMaff 

Jake Hanson

Erin founded Guardian Sports in 2011 at her kitchen counter and has since taken the company to an 8-figure business, with 20+ employees, and 90k sq. ft. of mixed warehouse & office space in Peachtree Corners, Georgia, all without the benefit of outside capital.

Guardian’s portfolio is made up of:

1. The Guardian Cap, which is worn by over 500,000 athletes, including all 32 NFL teams;
2. The PEARL Lacrosse Ball, which is the only ball made in the USA, and is the official ball of NCAA Lacrosse;
3.  Guardian Infill, which is a bio-based alternative to crumb rubber turf fields;
4.  Guardian LOOP, which is a multi-sport soft-shell headgear that reduces impact of incidental hits.

Before Guardian, Erin was a middle school mathematics teacher at Snellville Middle School and then stayed home to raise & homeschool five children, four of whom graduated with High Honors from Georgia Tech, and one with High Honors from Georgia State.

00:03

We're not in it for the money. We're in it to help better protect athletes and players and for a life after sports. Hello everyone, and elcome to another episode of The E-Comm Show. As usual. I'm your host, Andrew Maff, and today I'm joined by the amazing Jake Hansen, who is the COO over at Guardian Sports. Jake, how you doing? You ready for a good show? Yeah,

01:13

looking forward to it. Andrew,

01:15

yeah. I'm so excited to have you guys on the show. I'm super stoked to just talk about this. I'm very familiar with the brand. I'm a big fan of the brand. Everything that you guys have been doing is really cool. So the idea that we got to have you guys on the show is great. I know CEO Aaron got pulled away for being interviewed on Wired, which, I got to be honest, wired ecom show. Like, come on. But you know, what are you gonna do? So, Jake, I always like to start these off in a relatively stereotypical way of just like, give you a second here. Tell us a little bit about your background, where you got started, how you got into Guardian sports, and we'll take it from

01:50

there. Okay, yeah, no, that sounds good. So I can give you a little bit of background on Guardian sports as a whole, and a little bit on myself. So Guardian sports started. We are an offshoot of a company called The Hanson group, which is a material science business making everything from bulletproof glass to self sealing fuel tanks to all the golf ball covers for Vice maxfly tailor made and all the rock climbing holds in the world. So super interesting business where we basically solve big problems for companies like 3m BASF, they come to us. We're the smaller, lean, nimble, quick solutions, orienting company. And what happened is, back in about 2010 there was a group of doctors that approached the Hanson group with a soft shell helmet called the gladiator helmet. It kind of harkens back to the padded caps that Don bebe and Mark Kelso used to wear back in the days, except it was a soft shell helmet built into, built into the existing football helmet at the time Aaron and Lee, my parents took that concept up to up to the NFL, and that was also the same time that jacked up was one of the leading shows on ESPN, and they wanted those big hits. They said, We don't want a softer shell helmet. We want to hear the crack of the helmets on game days. I think that following that, you saw a huge wave of safety and people caring more, but at the time, it just wasn't there. At the time, I also started playing high school football. They were Aaron and Lee were also approached by a number of former players, saying, hey, you've got to do something. You've got to do something. And that's kind of where they came up with this concept of, instead of creating an all new helmet, we're going to create a one size fits all solution at a low cost that can augment every existing football helmet and start selling that. So that's how they came out with the Guardian cap. That kind of grew. They targeted those grassroots levels. They tried the youth market. Hey, we think that this is something that'll happen at the time. Lee, my dad was a little bit over ambitious, and thought, hey, what's, what's 5% of the overall football market? I think we can fit that. So he ended up purchasing 300,000 Guardian caps for us to have in our warehouse in the back. And that kind of brought my mom out of retirement, out of being a home teacher and or, sorry, being a middle school math teacher and the mother of five kids into starting Guardian sports. And from there, kind of grew picked up by Clemson, South Carolina, and then it was just a word of mouth thing. So those those circles began connecting over time, all the way to the point where we are now, where we are used and mandated by the NFL, CFL, born by over 90% of college programs, and used by over 500,000 athletes every single year.

04:51

That That story is just absolutely crazy, because, like, you know, I've I'm a big football fan. I know that you guys also do Pearl for. Cross I've started. I played lacrosse all through high school, so I'm very familiar with the brand. And I think the thing that's very interesting is, especially in the past, like five to 10 years, you guys have really taken off. I know there's even conversations now about some football players possibly wearing Guardian cap during the regular season, that they're exploring that now, you know the the amount of growth that you guys have seen has been, has been just ridiculous, comparatively. And it seems like you're just innovating different elements of sports. Because I also know there's, what is it called, you have the the additive to the turf as well, which is a big problem also, can you tell me a little about that? Yeah.

05:40

So, I mean, we take Phil, yep, we take a lot of core content. Yeah, that's it. Guardian, Phil is what we call it. So we've taken a lot of the core values and the processes that made the Hanson group successful, and took it from a B to B space to a direct to consumer space. So one of our core values that that we have as a company is lead with Yes. We think there's a ton of opportunity on the other side of Yes. So that's how we got started with the NFL. I mean, it was, we're going to jump into this. It was a call that that Aaron and Lee got one day on Sunday. This is back in 2022, in March, and they said, Hey, in three weeks, could you outfit all 32 teams with Guardian caps? And if we were to make this a mandate, yeah, sure, we'll figure it out. So that kind of same concept applies to all of the additional products that we've taken on over time, including the infill that you're talking about. We were looking at crumb at what turf fields are made of. They're made of ground up car tires, that is, tires that have had a 5060, 100,000 miles worth of use on them, and they're filled with arsenic, lead, phthalates, just terrible things for the human body. I mean, you would see a guy in a Tyvek suit and a rebreather, go out there lay an entire field of a couple 100,000 pounds of infill, and then 10 minutes later, take it off and say, All right, kids, you're good to go play on it. It just kind of made us think, like there's something else that can be done, like, well, a lot of what we do is, why hasn't this been changed? And that was the same thing with the infill. So instead of just sticking with the status quo, we said, what if we made this better? So we came out with a bio based it's over 40% corn and soy based infill that keeps Fields up to 30 degrees cooler than your existing crumb rubber, and it passes every single health test that you would need. So it passes the I mean, we had to do trout fish, rainbow trout fish testing. You have to do recyclability, and it passes all of those. So all of our products, and where we started and where we end up is, how do we make this better? And why hasn't someone done this before?

07:54

Yeah, yeah. And to be honest, all of your products seem to really speak to that. Like there's even when I played lacrosse, and I was looking at, like, lacrosse balls and stuff that, like the 5050, split of, you know, even just the color differences, like how many times how many balls I've lost, like in my backyard and I can't find them because of that same problem. I was like, this is obvious and yet easily fixed. So one of the things I was curious about is, like, the this, the sales approach, right? Like, you obviously, kind of got approached the NFL teams and started that process. And when you have a product that is clearly, you know, as a winner, it just stands out, clearly going to benefit everyone. It's obviously easier to sell, but there's still getting that word of mouth and getting out there and starting those conversations, getting those licenses done. Like, how did that whole process go through to start to get that in motion?

08:45

Yeah, so it was a lot of just continuing to show up, more than anything else. So a lot of it has to do with word of mouth. And it was going to a lot of trade shows where, honestly, people are laughing up their sleeves at you. They'll they'll come by your booth, turn around and then start cracking jokes at, oh, look at that funny looking helmet protector that's back over there. So we went to a lot of shows where we saw almost no interest whatsoever. But it was actually at a show that we went to, I think it was a concussion symposium back in 2017 back in Washington, DC, and at that point we'd had 656, years of on field data out there, and we had a doctor approach us and say, Hey, you should apply to the NFL Head Health Tech Challenge. It was the first time that they had done that. It was in the wake of the class action suit that a bunch of players had sued the NFL for the GPA, and we were the first winner of the NFL Head Health Tech Challenge. So what that allowed us to do was it opened up our product to be tested by the nfl's laboratories, for them to start to see, does this product actually work in the way that this company says that it does, and for us to have peer reviewed research that backed up that fact. So. Honestly, we didn't hear a lot from the NFL, following that up until that 2022, league wide mandate they had, it had been a lot of, hey, we've kind of, we're testing this. Can you send us a couple more caps? And we're like, Sure, can we're testing this. Can you send us a couple more caps? And that was really the extent of the testing, outside of just us continuing to go about business, trying to convert more and more colleges, more high school programs, more youth programs, until the NFL, I guess either had enough data that they felt, hey, this is something we want to put out on the practice fields, or they saw enough adoption at the College High School and youth ranks.

10:36

Yeah, and correct me, I'm wrong, but they're primarily meant for more consistent hits, not, like, those real big hits, right? How does that? Like, what? Why bother with the difference, right? Like, I mean, if you're you're probably in football, going to get consistently hit, and every now and then, yeah, you're gonna get clocked. But, like, Wouldn't it still be safer to just have it regardless?

11:01

Yeah, no, absolutely. And that's what the product was originally made for. Is it was based on a study done by Purdue University that the average high school lineman takes between 11 116 100 hits to the head every single season. Those are repetitive car crashes that that someone's going into over and over again when you hear that bang of helmet. So our goal was, how do we just reduce that? It's kind of like a boxer wearing headgear in practice. I mean, why not put something on to help deflect those blows? I think Boston University came out with a study that for every 2.6 years that you play football, your risk of CTE doubles. So it's not just those big hits that we're trying to avoid. Does it help with some of that? Yes, but honestly, no one knows what causes a concussion. We don't claim that we can prevent concussions because no one knows what it is, but what we're seeing is by reducing those non concussive blows over time, maybe it makes your brain just a little bit stronger and will help protect you in the long term for a life after football.

12:04

Yeah, what's the, what's the next move with it? Right? Because, like, you're mandated by the NFL, which is basically the peak of getting it, so then obviously, you've, you're, as you mentioned, you're in a ton of different colleges. There's high schools now using in peewee and all that kind of stuff. So like, what? Where do you go from here with, specifically with the cap,

12:25

yeah. So, I mean, we started out as a safety company, I think we'll always continue to be that way, but with the NFL now allowing it for game days, we're having to learn how to become a customization house and a esthetic company. So figuring out, how do we make the cap a little bit less rigid? We move away from the existing design? It was hard to move away from from a design that's worked for 14 years, but we're currently testing new models that can be logoed, that can have colors that match existing teams, helmets that's a little bit more streamlined. So then that way players can take that safety factor from the practice field onto the game field. So I think that's really the next step that we're looking at as a company, at least for the Guardian cap,

13:11

yeah, and from the D to C side, what's the approach there? Like, what's the concept of is it just people buying them as, like, one offs, if they're, you know, in leagues of their own, or anything like that. Like, how is that working? Yeah. I

13:25

mean, I'd say, honestly, 80% of our total sales for The Guardian cap are coaches buying for an entire program. So we have a pretty strong sales force out there, a national sales force of about eight sales reps around the country that are located in different regions, that the coaches can then hit up and they'll get team pricing, in which case, they'll get caps for an average of about $56 per unit. So that's our primary selling vessel. But then we also have, in the past year, because of the explosion of the brand, added a direct to consumer component, where you can buy one offs on our website, as well as arrange partnerships with Dick's Sporting Goods Academy sports and outdoors and shields, where you can actually buy in brick and mortar. Now, geez.

14:11

So I mean, you're the COO, so you've got to be trying not to kill yourself half the time with this, the amount of scale coming in that you've got to figure out, like, inventory and getting stuff in line, and then, because they're bulk orders, they're not just like, hey, one offs and, you know, you're just doing your normal ordering. So tell me a little bit about, like, what is that process like for you to be able to handle when, you know, all of a sudden, especially over the past several years, you've kind of seen that, like, just massive growth overnight. Yeah.

14:39

I mean, one of the things for us that we've always tried to do as a company is football coaches are notoriously and honestly, lacrosse coaches, any coach is notoriously last minute. So what our goal as an organization is, we want to ship either same or next day, guaranteed, no matter what our product is, what that puts as a. Burden on us as a company is to make sure that we have inventory all up front sitting in our warehouse. Yeah, that's why, as an org, we've also invested in now we have 100,000 square feet of just holding space back there. That's a huge cash outflow that we take on, at least up front. So making sure that we're trying to buy a little bit smarter going forward, because it's not like we're buying 50,000 caps. We're now buying upwards of 200,000 caps per year, 250,000 caps per year. So it's a lot of cash that we have to set aside at the end of each year, that we have to make sure that we have inventory just from that side on top of that, we have to make sure all of our platforms and our technology scales too, so making sure that the orders go through, that they're running through. I mean, a lot of my job has been connecting our CRM to our actual e commerce platform, going back into our ERP system. So working with a lot of outside consultants, and honestly, just like getting my my hands dirty, figuring out a lot of different stuff, of how can we make this more efficient, and going through the order processing flow on my own, and working with our team, who's been fantastic. I mean, seeing our numbers go up 89% or 100% year over year. 375% three year growth, like the fact that they've been able to scale and learn and take on new stuff has been fantastic. But trying to jump into that on a day to day, every now and again and say, like, Okay, why are we doing it this way? Why don't we try this way? Has been a huge, huge benefit to my role, and something that that I've really seen help our team a lot. Nice.

16:39

What are you willing to name drop any of the tech stack that you're using? Like, what the platform you're on? CRM? ERP, like, what are you guys using back there?

16:47

Yeah, yeah. So we use HubSpot for our CRM. That's our overall CRM. Shopify is our E commerce platform that's been been a solid platform for us on that side, and then, really it's been trying to find that connection point between those two that's been the most difficult for us. So we found some some additional plugins. We've looked at commercial, we've looked at quotific, so testing out some new opportunities there that that way, when a sales guy creates a quote he's not then having to copy all that back over, send it to our ops team to fulfill. It's just going to directly fulfill from there. So working with that ERP system, we're very quickly outgrowing this. But QuickBooks, desktop, just enterprise is what we use. Yeah, it's been a bit of a nightmare. Honestly, last year we we made a switch due to some just poor advice to QuickBooks Online and being an inventory company, it was a nightmare. So QuickBooks Desktop is getting us through now. It's third party hosted, so at least we've got that side taken care of, but we're gonna have to make a switch pretty soon, up to maybe a sage or a NetSuite or something like that. So we'll see, we'll see what the future has. But that's not a project that I'm really looking forward to taking on.

18:07

Yeah, really? Geez, what? Um, so the all the other products you've got going on, so we talked about, like the lacrosse ball you've got. You also have the other headgear, which is, I believe it's also on the hockey side, and just like really any physical sport, right? So all of the marketing for that is, it kind of a similar approach, of, okay, we're going after coaches in all of these different areas. Yeah, it's kind

18:33

of interesting. So we have to switch our approach depending on the product line. So lacrosse ball, we found, is really a commodity good. So originally, we allocated an entire sales force to it, similar to what we did with caps. What we found is that coaches are really just going to purchase that, either online or through just a quick purchase order. They don't really need to be sold on what the product is. So we've allocated a lot more dollars towards our digital spend when it comes to Pearl, and that's really where our money goes. We have a couple reps that that take quarters, that will deal with that will deal with coaches, but the lacrosse ball is really a commodity, direct to consumer product. Same with loop, another new product that we've added because it's just a one off. It's a softball headband that you can wear, number one rated, lowest cost on the market. I think, I think at a lot of it, honestly, Andrew, has to do with the price point and the average order value. I think when you get that sub $50 for your price, you can go direct to consumer. I think when you're talking about your guardian caps, where you're buying for an entire football team, and it can be two to $3,000 that's where you need a little bit more of that hand holding, and you need that that sales professional to kind of guide a coach through that process. Yeah,

19:49

yeah, that makes sense. The The other thing I was thinking about too, so obviously you mentioned you've got all this cash in an inventory that you got. Have to deal with, and you're kind of adjusting that. But correct me, I'm wrong. The company was more or less bootstrapped, correct? Like there was no crazy capital investment or anything like that. Like it's all been taken from the beginning. So is that, is that still the case, or have you guys started to kind of get involved elsewhere?

20:16

No, luckily, have not been diluted whatsoever. So still family owned, 100% Bootstrap, no debt, nothing else on the balance sheet. So we were originally funded by the Hanson group. I point behind me because they're on the other side of that wall of me, but originally started with them, where they covered us for probably the first five or six years, and then after that, just been seeking profitable growth. So we've been trying to end every year with cash on our balance sheet that we can then invest in inventory. And luckily, to this point, have not had to take any outside capital, any outside debt. We've been fully, fully liquid our entire experience, which is honestly been a blessing from our sense, because we're able to pivot, add new products, bring on new people, and just change, be really nimble. So it's been great. It's been a really great blessing for us as a business.

21:11

Are you aware of how incredibly rare that is to have a bootstrapped business that you now own 100% of still clearing nine figures pretty easily, globally known more or less at this point, and just continuously scaling without any debt, without anything like that's, that's not really a thing. I don't I could probably count like maybe three that I know of off the top of my head, and you're one of

21:38

them. Yeah, yeah. No, we're, we're we're blessed on that side, just the fact that we've been really conservative and really smart with how we allocate our capital. We we make sure we pay our people well. We've got a revenue sharing plan for all of our employees that they're tied to a percentage that as the company grows, so too does their stake in the business. No one has any equity. But at the end of every quarter, we say, Hey, this is how much we made. This is how much you're going to get paid. So I think it's really taken a lot of buy in, and I think that our people see that, and we try to reward them pretty well for it. So it's been been really exciting and has been great for us.

22:16

That's awesome, Jake, I don't want to take up too much more time. I know you're super busy. I obviously really appreciate you having you on the show. I would love to give the opportunity to let everyone know they can find out more about you, and of course, more about Guardian sports.

22:27

Yeah, no, if you want to find out more about us, just go to guardiansports.com you can reach out to us on our website. From there, you can either buy directly a product, directly on our website, or just reach out to a quote, and one of our sales pros will get back to you in the next two hours, usually, so happy to bring any business our way. And just really our mission is to go out and help more athletes. So anytime we can get out there and get connected with someone, we're not in it for the money. We're in it to help better protect athletes and players and for a life after sports. Love

23:00

Jake, thank you so much for being on the show. Of course, everyone who tuned in, thank you as well. Please make sure you do the usual rate review, subscribe all that fun stuff on whichever podcast platform you prefer, or head over to theecommshow.com to check out all of our previous episodes. But as usual, thank you all for joining us, and we'll see you all next time.

23:20

Thank you for tuning in to The E-Comm Show head over to theecommshow.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or on the BlueTuskr YouTube channel. The E-Comm Show is brought to you by BlueTuskr, a full service digital marketing company specifically for e-commerce sellers looking to accelerate their growth. Go to bluetuskr.com Now for more information. Make sure to tune in next week for another amazing episode of The E-Comm Show.