Routine Baseball Q&A

Tired of wearing corporate tee shirts of your favorite MLB team? Tell us about it. Admittedly, baseball is slow to change. But just like the on-field game has embraced different statistical models, the off-field baseball game has also embraced change over the past decade.

Enter Routine.

In 2011, Routine launched their clothing brand dedicated to baseball and the lifestyle surrounding it. Armed with a unique brand, a digital magazine, and a creative team, Routine has positioned themselves as a sought-after brand in the baseball world. If you play baseball, support baseball, and love the game, then Routine is up your alley. They have men's apparel (including this best-selling tee), women's apparel (you'll like this one), and headwear; all with a creative and comfortable slant towards America's pastime.

JustBats sat down with Routine, the company helping to make baseball more comfortable one tee at a time, to learn more.

For fans that aren't familiar with Routine, please tell us a little about the company and what you do.

We are a lifestyle baseball brand where we specialize in making off-the-field apparel. We tackle everything from hats all the way down to the socks and everything in-between. Recently, we've gotten into the digital magazine space. Since we're so heavily involved in the baseball player lifestyle on a daily basis, we created a sub-website called 'The Clubhouse.' Here we write about non-traditional news, get into custom gear, chat about ball player stories and also go more in-depth about Routine and the fashion side of the game.

What are the three best things about Routine?

1. That we're not afraid to flirt with that 'edgy' line. I think people (especially in the baseball world) can find our edginess very refreshing.
2. That we put a lot of time and thought into our products. We focus a lot on concepts and storytelling (be sure to read our 'stories' attached to each Tee design on our website), so being really clever with our designs and offering a quality product is something we take pride in.
3. We love our customers as if they were our teammates! I know that sounds so cliche, but it's true. We love to interact with them on social media and crack jokes and be sarcastic. It's like having 250,000 friends to chat with at any time!

Routine is dedicated to baseball and the lifestyle surrounding it. What do you consider to be the Baseball Lifestyle?

Baseball Lifestyle to us is like when you're at Golden Coral after a game mowing down the buffet with your team and talking about how you went 0-5 that game. Or when you're meeting up with buddies after class and talking about Bryce Harper's new cleats that dropped. Or sitting in the parking lot after practice for an hour just chatting about nothing with your teammates. It's amazing how much baseball influences our life and the memories made outside of the lines. Those are the moments we typically would take for granted but is what we love to focus on.

Routine has a wide variety of shirts, headwear, accessories, and collections. What are some of the most popular items?

It's a little of everything. Obviously, hats are always popular - naturally with ball players. Then some of our pop culture items are always pretty popular, like when we did a spin-off of Kanye West's 'The Life Of Pablo' album with the character Pablo from the video game Backyard Baseball. Then some of our more witty items like our 'keys to the batter's box' keychain are popular as well! We just released a new jacket for the first time this past weekend, and we completely sold out in less than three days. So needless to say, we will be doing some more of those soon!

Non-baseball fans often label baseball as too old-school. How do you think Routine is helping to break that label?

That's exactly what our mission was from the beginning - breaking that mantra that baseball is old. It's a sport that has a ton of history (and hasn't changed much over the years), and naturally, those who don't play or watch baseball will have that mindset. Kids will always be the future of the sport (like any sport), so if we can help in any way by making a fashion forward clothing line dedicated to baseball players, then we will continue to do so as long as we possibly can.

At JustBats, we love baseball bats and softball bats. If you could put the Routine magic on a bat, what would do?

Okay, that's a good question. We love to have options so we'd probably do two bats. Design is very subjective, so options are always solid. So we would probably do a minimalistic design, maybe mess with different finishes (matte and gloss) to make a pattern of some kind on the bat. Super subtle unless you're looking at it close up. Then we'd probably pair it with a more crazy design. Maybe a full color illustrated pattern and go super loud with it. Might have to mock some up for fun now!

Of course, you can design your own DeMarini bat and get crazy or simple.

Routine is often described as being cool. How do you continue to produce cool items?

We don't really go into the product design process thinking about how we can make it 'cool.' I think we make things that we would love to wear! We talk to a lot of players and have built great relationships with people where we can get honest opinions and input, so that helps. We are so deep in our market (because we are shoppers of our brand as well) that we can go into a product confident that if we like it, generally our customers will as well. Longevity is tough in the fashion industry, but if you look at the companies that have lasted over the years, the common denominator is that they stayed true to themselves and that's what we plan to do.

What does Routine have planned moving forward?

We plan to do some more cool stuff on our Clubhouse digital magazine! There's tons of room for growth there, so we're excited to keep plugging away on that. As far as clothing, we're really going to expand our product line. Working on more cut-and-sew pieces, jackets, wild accessories, you name it! We feel like we have the basics down like tees, hats, etc. so we're going to push the limits a little and expand our style. Should be a fun and challenging year!

Anything else you'd like to share?

Keep it Routine!

Thank you, Routine, for spending some time with JustBats. What do you think? How much do you love Routine? To bring it home, if you have any baseball bat or softball bat questions, please give our Bat Experts a call at (866) 321-BATS (2287). We're available to help you from click to hit.