San Diego, California
The Ledger
1 August 2026
CPO results land in August and pinning follows in September, which gives a command a matter of weeks to get gear designed, printed and shipped without anyone fronting money.
Ministry merch usually costs a church more volunteer hours than it returns, and Kingdom Come is what it looks like when the work is handed off instead.
Families are most willing to buy in the week they register, which is usually months before a league gets its store open, and the gap is the whole problem.
Hosted store platforms are good software with a fee stack most owners never total up, and there are two honest alternatives depending on whether you want to own the site or hand off the work.
Fall ball registration always produces one volunteer running a merch operation out of her garage. A real team store removes the job instead of reassigning it.
Made-to-order merch has a real December cutoff, and working backward from Christmas through shipping, production and design approval puts it earlier than most people assume.
The honest arithmetic of running merch yourself, from platform fees and blanks to the hours nobody invoices for, and what the managed alternative actually pays.
Fully managed is a phrase everyone uses and few itemize, so here is the whole list of what we do, the one thing left for the client, and the answer to the 20 percent objection.
