In the Stands Shop

In the Stands offers clothing for fans who truly enjoy visiting ballparks and stadiums. Our goal is to create a sense of community and camaraderie whenever you see someone wearing In the Stands apparel.

Challenge

How do expand the In the Stands brand past travel content and into apparel that still resonates with it's core audience.

Solution

We're focusing designs on the fan who is at the stadium to enjoy the atmosphere, and maybe doesn't have a super strong affiliation with a team.

Here's how i did it

How it all came together

Designing t-shirts has always been fun for me. I have over 20 years of experience as a UX designer, but I've also worked on shirt designs for several different companies. I even took a screen print class several years ago to understand the process better. This project is my first time doing anything like this for myself, so it was a fun experience.

With so many different sports-oriented clothing companies, we wanted to start small. We used a local screen printer in San Diego, AKA, and they were great to work with. We currently have six designs and a hat. There are a lot of other ideas floating around, and hopefully, those will get printed at some point.

About the designs

The initial idea was that the designs would not be specific to a team or sport. We wanted fans to be able to wear the shirt to any stadium or field, regardless of what it was. The shirt would fit in at baseball, lacrosse, arena football, or a Saturday morning soccer game at the park. There are a lot of different fans and a lot of different sports.

Well, I messed up that whole idea with our Beautiful Game shirt. I grew up playing soccer (yes, I called it soccer), and I still love a kickaround. I had an idea for a simple type treatment and an endline/touchline design, and we just rolled with it. Soccer will always hold a special place in my heart, so it was okay to have this one design. Plus, we recently added the MLS to the site.

The other designs are all clean and straightforward. We kept everything on gray and black shirts for the first drop to keep it neutral. A few professional teams have black and gray, but we weren't too worried about that.

White text on black background reading 'Crafted for GAMEDAYS' with a small shield emblem containing the letter S below.

Design with two flags labeled 'Yay!' and 'Go!' above a shield with letter S, surrounded by text saying 'I hope both teams are having fun in the stands.'

White text on black background reading 'For the love in the stands of the game, Stadium Apparel.'

Black graphic text ‘SPORTZ’ with a hand symbol showing the rock and roll gesture and lightning bolts on a dark gray background.

Product shots

In the Stands is a real labor of love for me, and is also a special DIY project. I decided I would do the product shots myself. I set up my little light kit in the garage and had a little photo shoot. It's not very fancy, but it got the job done.

Garage photography setup with two white umbrella lights, a tripod with a Nikon camera, and a gray t-shirt on a white backdrop tape-secured to the floor.

Black T-shirt with white text reading 'Crafted for GAMEDAYS' across the chest.

Gray t-shirt with a black print on the back reading 'I hope both teams are having fun in the stands' with small flags saying 'Yay!' and 'Go!'

Black T-shirt with white text reading 'For the love in the stands of the game' and 'Stadium Apparel'.

Dark gray t-shirt with stylized black text 'SPORTZ' and a hand sign graphic in the center.

BUY NOW

Since I did the whole inthestands.co site by myself, I figured why not try some ecommerce. I decided to start off pretty simple and just use one of the default Shopify themes. It's a pretty easy WYSIWYG editor and so far has worked fine. Down the road I might try to incorporate the Shopify workflow in the Webflow site, but that is down the road.

Website editor displaying Major League Stadium Apparel page featuring folded t-shirts and a black cap on grass.

E-commerce dashboard showing customization settings for a featured collection titled 'Featured products' with preview of four black and gray t-shirts featuring sports and game day themes.

WHAT I'VE LEARNED

I've always known this, but selling stuff online is hard. Getting people to the site doesn't always equate to sales. That is one thing I'm working on. Another thing I need to be better at is social. Trying to make In the Stands more available to the right type of people that might appreciate the brand.