How GlowBall Nation launched its glow-in-the-dark baseball store in 5 weeks and saved $50k in developer fees

GlowBall Nation is the world's only glow-in-the-dark baseball league. Its business sells glow-in-the-dark tournaments, home run derbies, and patented glowing baseball gear. Founder Trent is a serial inventor with around 20 patents. In 18 months, Trent has become the market leader in the space, growing almost entirely by word of mouth. GlowBall did $180k in orders in the last 60 days and is on track for close to $1 million by October. He is planning launching an official partnership with the MLB later this year.

Trent has never written a line of code but has built his business on Hercules. He's built two main apps: 1) an online store that sells GlowBall's gear, and 2) an event management app that connects the company's patented LED hardware to players on the field. Trent was able to build and launching his store live in 5 weeks. This was 6 months faster and $50k cheaper than what a developer quoted him. He was able to build and launch his on-field app in just a few days.

I'm a vision guy. The fact that Hercules allows me to just type in some stuff and it builds it in an instant is just unbelievable.

Launching an online store in 5 weeks and saving $50k in developer fees

GlowBall was quoted $50k and 6 months to build his online store. This was far too expensive for a company less than a year old. Not only that, he didn't trust these developers would be able to build the store they way he wanted. He'd lived the "telephone game" of handing a vision to developers, going back-and-forth for months, making compromises to meet deadlines, and finally settling for a final release that was not exactly what he wanted.

Trent built the store himself on Hercules. He had a working prototype in ~2 hours. He launched the full store live in 5 weeks. He customized it far past a basic template: he customized the background to a drifting blacklight hue, he build a backend admin portal for him to manage inventory, and he even built in a radio so shoppers can play music while they browse. If he wants to make a change, he can do it instantly. He was able to set up payment processing through Hercules Commerce in hours. And most importantly, by building the site himself, Trent estimates he saved at least $50k in developer fees.

I can try four different renditions of the site based off of a vision, pick the best one, and then be really where we land. And then if I decide I don't like it tomorrow, I can change it again in an instant.

Connecting its patented LED hardware to the app in days, not months

GlowBall wanted a way to control its patented LED hardware from a mobile app. The hardware is quite complicated: it includes a foldable, pixelated LED scoreboard that sets up on the fence line, glowing bases, and field lights. It's designed to be controlled by a central hub during a game. Trent did not have any budget allocated to spend on this and thought it might be impossible.

Trent built a mobile app on Hercules that connected to all his hardware in just a few days. The mobile app allows a player to create their profile, customize their walk-up song, see their state, and set a scoreboard theme. Before interesting the field, a player just enters their player ID and the GlowBall's hub app does the rest.

My part-time developer was floored. In the past this would have been an impossible task. But because of Hercules we were able to do it in a few days for basically no cost.

Why Hercules

Trent isn't technical. Hercules allows him to turn his vision into working software instantly for little cost. He'd never tried another site builder. The first time he opened Hercules it built something for him in seconds, and he was hooked. Now he works on his apps from 9pm to 3am when his kids are asleep.

One of the biggest hurdles in a company is getting the vision relayed to the people that have to build it. With Hercules, I can do just do that.

What's next

Trent continues to build his ideas on Hercules. The first is a wholesaler portal, where event organizers who order $50k to $60k of balls, apparel, and lights at a time can log in to their own wholesale pricing and pre-order for their events. The second is ticketing for GlowBall's 2-day Field of Dreams event coming up in October.

It was a no brainer to build our event ticketing platform on Hercules.