Rawlings Sporting Goods: Scaling Team Uniform Programs with Artifi

Situation

Rawlings Sporting Goods is a global authority in diamond sports, offering high-performance sports equipment, apparel, and custom team apparel. The company sells its product through multiple channels including broad retail operations, local sporting goods dealers, and a strong direct-to-consumer ecommerce business.   

Challenge

Historically, team customization programs relied on dealer-led, manual workflows. Coaches and leagues worked through dealers to manage setup, customization, and ordering with Rawlings, using static tools, email-based design revisions, and offline proofing. This approach limited customization, increased back-and-forth, and slowed sales cycles.  

There was no real-time visibility into changes or approvals, leading to late error discovery and rework. At the same time, Rawlings needed to support multiple customization program models, from dealer-managed to administrator-led, which was difficult to do consistently without a centralized platform. 

Solution

Rawlings chose Artifi as the product customization platform for the MyLocker360 experience and integrates it with Znode to scale its team uniform business. Artifi provides the uniform customization, rendering, and design approval foundation. Znode allows teams and leagues to manage their own stores. Together, the platforms support a unified customization and ecommerce experience across team programs. 

The Rawlings team leverages a library of design templates in Artifi for each jersey style and product type. These templates define design areas, layout options, and supported decoration methods. By standardizing templates, Rawlings creates a repeatable framework for building custom uniforms and team products that can be transacted through ecommerce at scale.  

Artifi supports different uniform program models through a single customization engine. In partner-supported programs, dealers use Artifi to create and manage custom uniforms while minimizing manual proofing and back-and-forth on behalf of teams and leagues. In other scenarios, teams and leagues use the same templates and workflows to manage their own designs directly. This flexibility allows Rawlings to support multiple engagement models without changing the underlying functionality.