Baseball? Bigger than you realize!
DALLAS — One thing you learn at the winter meetings: The baseball industry is much bigger than Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder and 30 general managers trying to wheel, deal, swap and sign.
It’s guys like Chad Walters, a 32-year-old with an MBA in marketing from Indiana. Walters refers to himself as a lean technician. His goal: Help teams and companies become more efficient … no, not with their payroll or statistical analysis but in delivering a better product to fans.
Walters had a copy of “Moneyball” sitting on his table at the winter meetings trade show. “There’s a quote in there about ‘The first guy through the wall always gets bloody,’” Walters said. “I’m kind of that first guy through the wall.”
In minor league baseball, where profit margins are razor thin, the ability of teams to be as efficient as possible in expenditures is vitally important. We’re talking about things like developing more effective concession lines with fewer employees and less product waste. Or knowing how to order T-shirts with a quicker, cheaper turnaround time than waiting eight weeks for a product to be delivered from China. Through his consulting business, LeanBlitz, Walters hopes to help organizations become more “lean” via a variety of faster, smarter techniques.
The trade show, held in a convention-center like ballroom at the winter meetings, is full of people like Walters, trying to market their products to major- and minor-league teams or other companies. There were plenty of vendors displaying new takes on T-shirts and jerseys and caps, but the products ranged from plastic cups to sausages to bat companies to wrist bracelets to stadium architects and beyond.