Baseball isn’t just a sport or even a business to Renegade Brands Athletics salesmen Dick Miller and Obie Hydrick. It’s a way of life.
As the chief liaisons between RB Athletics and a large swath of the nation’s major- and minor-league franchises, they follow and respond to baseball’s ups and downs like helicopter parents. That is to say: closely, and with genuine care.
“It becomes personal, a little bit,” said Miller from his base in Florida. “We want those guys to be working, and we’re glad for them when they are.”
They’re certainly working now, and RB Athletics is right there alongside them. While the Major League Baseball lockout didn’t affect Miller and Hydrick’s work with minor-league and affiliate teams, the settlement in March and sudden arrival of spring training kicked the sales reps into high gear.
Their lives weren’t as stressful as they might have been, however. Spring training may be slightly compressed, but Hydrick and Miller were prepared. With their long experience in sports, they knew what their customers – equipment managers, mostly – would be looking for almost before they asked.
“We were ready to go when the storm hit and they got back to business,” said Hydrick, from his home in Arizona. “We have relationships with these guys and their clubhouses. We knew they’d be in a crunch, and we were able to take that concern off their minds. They didn’t have to worry about laundry detergent.”
It helped that the detergent in question, Nano X, couldn’t be more effective or easier to install, use, or re-supply. That Hydrick and Miller are responsive, knowledgeable, and trustworthy sales reps goes a long way, but the truth is their product almost sells itself, especially to professional baseball teams.
Note the use of the word “product,” not “products.” Unlike most other sports laundry systems, RB Athletics employs just one safe and highly efficient detergent, with the option of an additional Action powder that brightens white uniforms stained by clay.
That saves equipment managers time, money, and space, all of which are in short supply in clubhouses, and lightens the load – so to speak – on Hydrick and Miller.
“The simplicity of what we’re offering makes everyone’s jobs very easy,” Miller said. “We can kind of anticipate their needs and take care of everything ourselves. We don’t run into a lot of problems.”
That’s not say Miller and Hydrick don’t work hard. They do, especially during baseball season, when they’re both in demand across large territories.
But they’re not complaining. They love baseball and keeping their baseball clients happy. Best of all, like all true baseball fans, they love a good victory.
“We root for the teams that use Nano X, and when one of them wins, there’s a sense of pride,” Hydrick said. “We feel like we got a little piece of that championship.”
Written by Zachary Lewis