Suite Life Spike Ball



It’s one of those success stories that seems like it happened overnight. From afar, Spikeball was a game invented in the 1980s that fell short of reaching mass adoption. Fast forward to 2004 when Chris Ruder, the founder, was on a trip in Kauai with his older brother and friends.

The X-Ball® is an innovative breaching tool with astonishing glass-breaking capabilities. The X-Ball® can easily break through windows in most vehicles with a firm tap or an underhand throw. This compact device eliminates the face-to-flame or face-to-fugitive contact firefighters, law enforcement officers, and military personnel make when. The Suite Life All Games. Camera Twin Spin; Suite Life Spike Ball; Zack & Cody's Tipton Trouble; Kitchen Commotion; Pool Invasion; Pizza Party Pick Up; Maddie's Snack Encounter; London's Suite Styler; Fish Hooks All Games. Catapult Chaos; Fresh Water Bounce; Clamantha's Pucker Practice; Lilo & Stitch All Games. Kauai Caper; 625 Sandwich Stacker.

He brought out his brother’s old Spikeball set and couldn’t stop playing. As they played, beachgoers always asked the same three questions: what’s that game, how do you play, and where can I get it? After they returned home, the thought kept coming up about how much they loved to play and how total strangers were attracted to the game too.

They soon realized the market was screaming, bring Spikeball back to life! As first time entrepreneurs though, they had no clue how to start a company, manufacture products, or market to customers. Like most people with ideas to start a business, they did nothing. In the years following, they’d always think about the game they loved to play and finally got sick of those “what if” discussions. Spikeball was about to come alive!

Bringing a Sport Back to Life

Chris talked to an attorney right off the bat as he worried about potential trademark and patent infringement. Turned out, the trademark had expired and there never was a patent. They even reached out to the original inventor but nothing ever came of that. The team was soon off to the races but didn’t know how to get started.

Cody

Their first move was to pull some startup capital from friends but made everyone aware that they should only put in what they could afford to lose. None of the team had started a company, done any manufacturing, or built a brand so the chances were sky high that they would lose it all. They ended up with $100,000 and six friends in.

The company started as a side gig since no one wanted to leave their day jobs just yet. They agreed to have conference calls every two weeks after they divided up their responsibilities. After a few of these calls, they realized their system didn’t work. Some guys wouldn’t show up while some guys just didn’t do the work they were supposed to complete. The team soon realized that Chris should be the main operator and the rest of the squad be investors.

For Chris with a wife and kids, it didn’t make sense to quit his job and run Spikeball full time. Even with $100,000 in the bank, the company had very few sales and wasn’t a proven business just yet.

In June 2008, Spikeball.com was launched. Their first month was great, netting them $3,900 in sales. It took two years to beat that first month sales number. A league was started for after-work Spikeball but most attendees came because they felt guilty if they didn’t show up. The early sales really came from family and friends that were trying to support.

When a new sale came in, Chris personalized each response with a goal of trying to understand what fueled a customer’s purchase. He soon realized that a lot of Spikeball’s customers were Ultimate Frisbee players, PE Teachers, and kids from faith-based youth groups. By finding a target market to hone in on, Chris could focus the company’s marketing strategies.

This is where most consumer brands go wrong. They think that everyone is interested in their products. What you really need to do is find your product’s market fit. Not everyone is going to love your company and that is actually good. In fact, it’s often better to have ten customers that love you rather than a thousand that like you. Figure out who your most loyal customers are and see how you can find more like them.

Though Chris wasn’t a member of any of these organizations, the Spikeball seed had been planted there. He started reaching out to ultimate frisbee players and youth group directors on Twitter and Facebook. He’d send free sets to large organizations in exchange for photos of them playing Spikeball.

This strategy is now called influencer marketing but in the early 2010s, Chris was setting a trend by trying to get thought leaders to play Spikeball so their followers would become interested. This approach still works today, as they send free sets to thought leaders when the company is trying to tap into a new audience.

Problems with Scaling

Chris and the team set a goal of doubling sales every year. As you grow this obviously becomes a real challenge. It’s easy to go from $20,000 to $40,000 but $3m to $6m can be another story.

As they were making this push, there was a huge strike at the port they used to import their products. The company ran out of inventory and couldn’t fulfill orders. Not only was the team in a really tricky situation trying to figure out what was happening at the port with their products, but their customers were eagerly awaiting delivery. This almost caused them to completely miss their sales goal.

This is one of the hardest balances an ecommerce company faces: lead times. They can often change drastically and how do you manage unexpected delays like port strikes? At scale, you can never be single sourced or use a single port. You should always have multiple factories that are capable of producing your product and different port options to import your products to different warehouses. When you’re a small business, this may not be that important but once you grow to a few million in yearly sales, production or freight problems can kill your business.

When we approach a supply chain at Sourcify, we always analyze the options we have to produce this product. This enables you to manage risk effectively, just like Chris and the Spikeball team overcoming this freight problem.

With over 1,000,000 people playing Spikeball around the world now, having a robust supply chain is the backbone of their company.

Since its founding in 2008, the company has grown more than 2,700% and posted record sales numbers each year:

  • $1.3 million in 2013
  • $3.2 million in 2014
  • $6.9 million in 2015

Their growth stems from market expansion. What started as a focus on youth groups and PE teachers has stemmed to university sports teams and their own international Spikeball tournament that gave a $5,000 cash prize to the winner.

The Secret Sauce

What really makes Spikeball special to their players is their customer support. Though this isn’t widely marketed, Spikeball actually replaces all parts for free. Palmer suggests customers love it:

“We replace parts for free for life. People will actually call and ask if they can purchase a replacement part because something has broken. Our answer is no- we will NOT sell you a replacement part. What we will do though is give you the part you need absolutely free. Customers are amazed by this which is the point- we love surprising and delighting them. We care about facilitating the playing of the game and people can’t play unless they have equipment that functions. We do this no questions asked and we cover the shipping which really resonates with customers. So it turns out, free replacement parts are our number one marketing expense.”

This may seem unnatural for some companies, but if you can create customer advocacy, you would be surprised how far that can go.

Besides amazing customer support, Spikeball has lofty goals of making their sport included in the Olympics, NCAA, and even develop a professional league of their own. With the sport being introduced to people around the world everyday, it’s not surprising to see the company’s amazing growth.

Suite Life Spike Ball

Continuing to Grow

Spike Ball Suite Life Of Zack And Cody

As the company began to grow, they moved from fulfilling Spikeball sets in their apartment to a swift third party logistics partner. Though this ate into their operational costs, in order to provide exceptional customer service they needed a partner who specialized in fulfillment. Their free product replacement policy also pushes them to create the highest quality products.

Chris originally wanted to price the product at $40 but they improved the quality and added a few more balls and raised the price to $59, while paying $13 a unit to manufacture. Though this sounds like a big margin, most ecommerce companies need to run a 75% plus gross margin. Your margin gets eaten up by operation costs like shipping, duty tax, and payroll.

It’s exciting to see Spikeball grow from a concept no one knew about in the 1980s to a sport with teams around the world. As you can tell, none of this happened overnight. There were hiccups with product development, logistics, ecommerce, distribution, and more. What really sticks out here is the company’s focus on attracting and maintaining loyal customers.

Don’t just target anyone with your ecommerce business. Find a niche that really resonates with what you’re creating. Build relationships with those initial customers and find out why they’ve purchased your product.

This is the latest edition of the Men's Power Rankings for the 2017 season. The list was formed by a panel of 8 individuals, spanning all regions, who discuss the rankings team-by-team. Injured and inactive teams have been removed from contention. A team is considered active if either (1) the team has competed in the past three months, or (2) one player from the team has competed in the past month.

Cisek_showalter had perhaps their most dominant win of the season at the Chicago Grand Slam. Cisek and Showalter have only dropped one match all season. Will anyone have an answer for them come post-season?

Strange Embrace moved down a spot last month after a loss to Origin Impact. With Impact's losses at the Chicago Grand Slam, Rouse and Matson reclaimed their number two spot. They will be fighting to retain this position with a West Regionals win.

2 Guys finished as seeded at the Chicago Grand Slam and earned wins over Point Loma and Origin Impact, moving them into the top three for now. The test for these two will be at West Regionals where they will have another opportunity to take down Strange Embrace, but they also have to watch out for Point Loma and the new Bud n' Boles.

Impact inched by Origin Chaos in the Chicago quarterfinals before an unexpected loss to Golden Set. Hornacek and Drucker are still the heavy favorite to take Midwest Regionals (especially with Chaos not attending) and will hope to look stronger against those out of region teams come Nationals.

Golden Set earned perhaps their two biggest wins of 2017 at the Chicago Grand Slam en route to a superb second place finish. Brumby and Zishka showed great consistency in a few close, three-game series. With a win over the formerly #5 Anchored LI and Origin Impact, Golden Set has found themselves taking that ever-changing #5 spot.

Anchored LI had a lot of eyes on them after their Boston Grand Slam win. The success did not follow in Chicago as Alvino and Fitzgerald narrowly dropped to Golden Set in the quarterfinals.

Unfortunately, Point Loma traveled to Chicago only to lose to the only other West team in attendance. They forced a third game against 2 Guys and that experience may be helpful heading into West Regionals this weekend. The pair is looking to potentially score an upset over Strange Embrace or 2 Guys, while also defending their #3 in the West spot.

Origin Chaos has attended three tournaments this season and has been eliminated by Origin Impact at each of them. In Chicago, their match was as close at it could be but Bohnen and Weiler again fell short. With the pair not competing at Regionals together, Nationals is their last hope for a tournament performance to match their expectations.

Max and Cole Model didn't play in the Chicago Grand Slam this year and with Max leaving for college we will see how their play and chemistry are come East Regionals.

With Bolivia's sub-par result in Boston, it has now been about three months since they had a solid tournament performance. The real test will be at Southeast Regionals where they may face the strong mash-up of Eric Zishka and Grayson Ayres.

Nashburgh found decent pool play success but ran into Origin Chaos in the round of 16 in Chicago. The veterans fell in two to the young guns two tight games. Nashburgh has still not found much success in 2017 compared to past seasons.

A couple poor pool play performances in Chicago lead to a crazy Round of 32 match-up in Tetelestai versus Ohio Against the World. Once again the serve of Jesse Throw made a huge impact and the consistent defense of Throw and Cornelius pushed them past OATW. In the next round, Tetelestai forced Anchored LI to three but couldn't pull off the upset. Surprisingly enough, Throw and Cornelius appear to be the second seed heading into Midwest Regionals.

Once again Do a Barrel Roll found themselves on the losing end of a three-game series with a top-level team. The pair had a lead in game three versus Golden Set in the Round of 16 but could not hold off Brumby and Zishka. This team is very close to a breakthrough and it may come at East Regionals, where in 2016 they got their first solid win.

Suite Life Of Zack And Cody Spike Ball

Sleeper Pick lived up to its name in Chicago, earning the 8 seed out of pool play and making it to the top 8. A win over Origin Force also gave them their first power ranked win and landed them in the top 25 for this month.

Force was upset by the aforementioned Sleeper Pick on their home turf in Chicago. The wide serves of Pierron were too much for these guys to handle and Dolson and Hynes have moved under them and other Midwest regional contender Tetelestai.

Ohio Against the World had a dissapointing T-17th finish in Chicago after poor pool play lead them to face Tetelestai in the round of 32. Some right arm pain from Bonta and the solid play of Throw and Cornelius led to an unfortunate showing for the Ohio natives.

As they often do, Rizk and Schafer spent the month mashing up with different partners at multiple events. The pair will return to action at East Regionals.

Like Schizik, August was a mash-up month for the Albany boys. Now at U-Albany, Rock and Dariano will get lots of practice for East Regionals.

Easily Dug found success at home in the Southeast with a tournament win, but did not find as much success on their first out of region trip. The pair could not get much going in pool play and fell in the round of 16 to the eventual champions. Their projection for this weekend's Southeast Regionals is up in the air.

Billy Buchhauser and Bryce Johnson will now be teaming after playing with a myriad of partners in 2017. Their first event was in San Francisco where they placed third and now they'll be thrown in to a much deeper competition at West Regionals.

Spector was able to win a small Connecticut event with Max Model and Abramson attended the King of the Island event on Long Island. With their close loss to Spicy Dirt in Boston, we can't be too sure how they would perform at East Regionals if they choose to attend.

No action coming from either Zimmerman this month and we hope to see them at Midwest Regionals.

After four tournaments in July, Salty Meat took it a bit easier and mashed-up in August.


Cho's Bros has had an up and down season and we do not know what we will get going into this weekend's Southeast Regional. The team has both top 3 potential and a chance to exit well before that.

Bullcity Spikes (formerly NC Spikes) had made their way onto the Power Ranking with wins this month over solid Southeast teams in Cho's Bros and Daddy's Crackers. As the pair is not yet Premier, we fully expect a top 3 finish in the Advanced Division at Southeast Regionals.

Honorable Mentions:

Living Weirdos - Andrew Graczyk and Chris Wilkins (Chicago, IL)

Santa Cruz Slingerz - Ryan Navaroli and William Potter (Santa Cruz, CA)

Sub-Par Team - Jacob Martinez and Josh Fragiacomo (Ventura, CA)

Unicorn Rampage - Ben Bunze and David Thole (Fuquay Varina, NC)

Suite Life Spike Ball

WE THE NORTH - Charles Henri and Marc-Etienne McLaughlin (Montreal, QC)

Removed due to inactivity or team changes:

Chico Phantoms - Taylor Johnson and Bryce Johnson (Chico, CA)

The Suite Life - Zach Zimmerman and Cody Thompson (San Diego & Long Beach, CA)

Suite Life Spikeball

Spicy Dirt - Anthony Rentsch and Alex Harris (Amherst and Natick, MA)

Got something related to roundnet that you want to know more about? Have any topics you want to be discussed on the podcast? Contact Mike White at mwhitey17@gmail.com or @mwhitey17 on Twitter.

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