At A Glance

Bill Rom co-founded Baseball Lifestyle 101 as an Instagram influencer account in 2016 before launching products that generated nearly a million dollars without paid advertising the following year. Through strategic investments in content creation, exceptional product quality, and customer retention initiatives yielding a 52% return rate, Rom has transformed a living room startup into a retail powerhouse projected to reach $200 million in sales this year.

Who is Bill Rom?

Meet Bill Rom, CSO and Co-Founder at Baseball Lifestyle 101!

About Baseball Lifestyle 101

Baseball Lifestyle 101 began as a passion project started by Bill’s co-founder Josh Shapiro. Josh’s love for baseball as a child has developed into a major brand with more than 100 employees. The company specializes in off-field apparel that taps into passion so many feel for baseball. 

Bill’s Journey

Bill Rom launched Baseball Lifestyle 101 with his partner Josh as a pioneering social media venture before expanding into product sales. "The company got founded in earnest back 2016, really was just an influencer account. We were one of the first Instagram influencer accounts that existed," he explains.

The transition from content to commerce happened quickly and proved immediately successful. "2017, we decided to launch product, so we did a little under a million dollars that first year, no Facebook ads, anything else," Bill notes. This organic growth continued: "2018 did over a million dollars in sales. Again, no Facebook ads."

The company's expansion accelerated dramatically after implementing more sophisticated marketing approaches. "2019, we started to launch Facebook ads, started to grow a little bit more in earnest," he explains. This strategy, combined with their established audience, has yielded exceptional results: "Fast forward to now, 2023, we did a little under 5 million. Last year, we did a little under 40. And then this year, we're going to do a little under 200 million."

The Team at Baseball Lifestyle 101

Baseball Lifestyle 101's evolution from side project to major business is reflected in their team's growth. "The original was Josh and Melissa were full-time doing it. Melissa popped open an agency because it was early in the life and she's like, 'I got to make extra money to survive,'" Bill recalls of their humble beginnings. "I had another gig that I was doing full time. I was just helping—I'd get home and they'd be in my living room and we'd build the business together."

From those after-hours strategy sessions emerged a committed leadership group. "A couple of years later, there were five of us. Those five are still the core five people in the company. They're still our executive team," Bill notes with pride. The company's rapid expansion is particularly evident in their customer service operations: "Our director of customer experience was part time, just answering customer service tickets because there were five a day, 10 a day. Now, I think we closed about 350 to 500 tickets a day."

Business Growth and Revenue Strategies

Baseball Lifestyle 101 has developed a geographically distributed customer experience team to support their rapid growth. "My director of customer experience is based in Florida. We're based in New York," Bill explains. "Her right-hand person is in West Virginia. The two of them kind of lead and do strategy and are like the white glove service side of what our customer experience looks like."

This core team focuses on high-touch engagements with their most valuable customers. "They run our Facebook page, a private Facebook group where we have over 2,000 of our best customers," he notes. Supporting this leadership team is "a secondary team of people answering who are remote around the globe, really, by time zone more than anything else," allowing the company to provide comprehensive support while maintaining a streamlined contact approach: "We try to have one frictionless point of contact. We use email as the key thing." This customer service structure is reinforced by their six-person quality assurance team who "functionally takes on CX responsibility" for special requests, creating multiple layers of customer support within their "very robust team."

The importance of retention

Baseball Lifestyle 101 has made customer retention a cornerstone of their growth strategy. "We're at 52% return customer rate. As we're scaling to nine figures online this year, that's a lot of return customer revenue," Bill explains.

This impressive loyalty stems from their comprehensive approach to customer satisfaction: "product quality, how we prioritize reviews, and the fact that the experience is frictionless." The company recently enhanced this strategy by gamifying engagement through a tiered rewards program where customers "unlock better gifts" as they make more purchases. By consistently rewarding repeat business, Baseball Lifestyle 101 transforms satisfied customers into a powerful engine for sustainable growth.

Innovation and Adaptability

Baseball Lifestyle 101 has built its business on the foundation of exceptional content creation and product quality. "We've been brand marketing focused for very long. We've had a full-time videographer on our staff since 2018," Bill explains. This investment in original content has yielded remarkable engagement: "We have 782,000 followers on Instagram, but they're engaged. Our April numbers came back—we did 40 million views across our socials."

This extensive reach creates significant market penetration. "Every 75 days, we've cycled through the potential audience in front of their eyeballs," Bill notes, explaining how their content reaches baseball's massive fan base. Complementing this visibility is their commitment to exceptional product quality: "Some of our performance fabrics, we're better than Lululemon, our quality is better than them. We have a parent who has the resources to buy from those brands. When our stuff comes in and it's half the price, it's shocking." 

This quality-to-price ratio drives impressive customer retention: "The quality is amazing. My kid wears it every single day. The colors never fade. The fabric never rips." The resulting word-of-mouth has become their primary acquisition channel: "Our number one source of new customer is friends and family."

Advice for Entrepreneurs

"I think different advice is going to resonate depending on what life circumstances around you are," Bill explains, acknowledging that entrepreneurial journeys begin at various stages. For young people, he emphasizes the value of experience: 

"Don't discount sacrificing time for experience still." Those in their late twenties to early thirties facing the "now or never" feeling should "take any step that moves you in that direction." For older entrepreneurs wondering if opportunity has passed them by, Bill is emphatic: "The answer is no. If you wake up every day and feel like you need to start something, you should."