How we work
Three steps, no hold music.
Ordering custom apparel for an athletic program should be the easiest part of your season. For most coaches, it's one of the worst. You send a request form into a web portal, you wait, you get routed through an account manager who's three time zones away and handling a hundred other programs. When something goes wrong, there's no one to call.
We built Plus Effort to run the opposite playbook. Here's what working with us actually looks like.
- 01
Game Plan
Every relationship starts with a direct conversation. Not a form, not a chatbot, not a boilerplate quote sheet. A fifteen-minute call with Kevin or Scott where you tell us what you need and what hasn't worked before.
We ask specific questions: What sports are you outfitting? What's your roster size? When does your season open? What's the budget ceiling? What did your last vendor get wrong? By the end of that call, we know enough to build a real proposal, and you know enough to decide if we're a fit.
We don't pitch you. We listen, take notes, and follow up with something specific within a business day. If the scope is simple, the proposal is a page. If you're an athletic director outfitting a full department, the proposal is built sport by sport with per-unit pricing you can plan against. No ranges, no “starting at” language. Real numbers you can put in front of your AD or your booster board.
You can start that conversation through the quote form or by emailing us directly at hello@pluseffort.com.
- 02
Design
Once you approve the proposal, we move into design. This is where programs that care about their identity win and programs that don't get stuck with generic gear that looks like everyone else's.
We start with your existing artwork. Whatever you have, in whatever format: vector files, old JPGs, scanned printouts, a photo of a jersey from 2004. We clean it up, vectorize it, and flag anything that won't reproduce well on fabric. If your logo needs a real refresh, we tell you honestly and suggest what to change. If it's fine as is, we leave it alone.
Then we recommend specific products, fabrics, and decoration methods based on what you're outfitting. Football jerseys with tackle twill numbers. Performance tees with screen printing for spirit wear. Embroidered coaching polos. Sublimated softball jerseys with all-over designs. We match the method to the use case because the wrong method on the right product fails fast.
You see digital mockups of every piece before we produce anything. Exact colors, exact logo placement, exact decoration specs. If something looks wrong, we revise. If you want to see three options, we send three options. No production begins until you explicitly approve.
Color consistency matters here. If your school has Pantone specs, we match to those. If you don't, we match to a physical sample. Every subsequent order hits the same color, so your program looks consistent year over year. (More on specific decoration methods in the FAQ.)
- 03
Delivery
Production runs three to four weeks for custom decorated apparel, five to six weeks for full uniform sets. Those timelines start from your mockup approval, not from the first email. We tell you the exact date your order will ship before you commit, and we hit those dates.
Every piece gets a hand quality check before it leaves us. Stitching, color, sizing, decoration placement, all reviewed against the approved mockup. Your order ships directly to your athletic facility, or wherever you tell us to send it. Shipping is included in the proposal price. The number on your quote is the number you pay.
If something arrives wrong, you call or email Kevin or Scott and we fix it. No forms, no account manager, no charge. We replace damaged or incorrect pieces at our cost, usually faster than the original order because the specs are already locked. Reorders mid-season work the same way, which matters when you get a transfer in October or a jersey shreds in week three.
What makes this different.
The big national vendors run a different playbook. They win on raw volume pricing and lose on everything else. You can get a cheaper quote on a single SKU if you're willing to accept the tradeoffs: delayed production, account managers who rotate every six months, voicemail when something goes wrong, and a brand identity that looks like forty other schools in the region.
We work differently because we're structured differently. Plus Effort is founded and operated by Kevin Badke and Scott Reinen, two Charlottesville operators who've spent their careers in athletics and business. Kevin coaches football at a local prep school and has run Charlottesville restaurants for two decades. Scott has coached youth baseball for twelve years and built growth programs for venture-backed startups. When you call Plus Effort, a founder answers, because the founders are the ones running the operation.
That means three things in practice. First, we take on accounts we can service personally. We're not chasing volume for its own sake. Second, when a problem surfaces, it gets fixed fast because there's no escalation path to climb. Third, we care about your program's identity because we understand how programs are built. A uniform is not a commodity purchase. It's a statement about what your program stands for, and it should look like the program you're building.
We've built Plus Effort for programs that are building something real: high school athletic departments, collegiate programs, club and youth organizations that want a partner instead of a vendor. If that sounds like your program, start a conversation. Fifteen minutes, no pitch.
