MLB started the season with an intriguing new collection of niche apparel licensees, generally serving sports and lifestyle collections: Redvanly, Baseball Lifestyle 101, casual footwear brand Hey Dude and Brunch.
The Redvanly apparel brand, which pioneered the likes of “stretch performance” denim, is a unique amalgam of golf, tennis, lifestyle and leisure elements, now with MLB indicia layered in as a new licensee.
In its first league deal, the New Jersey-based brand is making around 25 SKUs per team of licensed polos, quarter-zips and hoodies. Redvanly has wide green-grass retail distribution and is expanding into its own retail locations (three of them), along with big box and specialty sporting-goods retail.
“Our brand is a promise of sports and performance for any lifestyle, with price points maybe a bit lower or competitive with Peter Millar and Johnnie-O,” said CMO Mike Shakespeare.
Director of Licensing Brendan Hyland said MLB is just a first step. “Within three years, I’d like to see us licensed across all the big four leagues,” he said.
This is the first — but we’re sure not the final time — that we will write these words about a licensee: Baseball Lifestyle 101 started as an Instagram account for a 15-year-old. We’re told it has since become a paradigm for how social media can grow and amplify a startup licensee.
The “baseball lifestyle” clothing line started in 2017 has grown to be a brand with more than $150 million in annual sales. It’s gone from DTC on-line sales to brick-and-mortar at around 10 stores of its own, to distribution with retailers as significant as Dick’s Sporting Goods, Scheels and Academy. Now as a full-fledged MLB licensee, BL101 has the challenge of maintaining its fanciful lifestyle sensibilities and designs while finding the appropriate mix with MLB’s IP.
Hey Dude’s casual footwear is somewhere between, slip-ons and moccasins. It has been another story of extraordinary growth — it’s now a billion-dollar brand — leading to its $2.5 billion acquisition in 2022 by Crocs, itself an MLB licensee since 2007.
Fellow casual footwear label Brunch’s specialty is slippers, with robes to match. As the company puts it: “By blending nostalgia with modern functionality, Brunch creates a reason to relax.” So far, it is limited to a “Yankees for Brunch” collection and DTC distribution with slippers priced starting at $108 and a $210 robe.
