Taking a rugby brand from zero to $50K.

Vortex Rugby is a sports apparel and gear brand built for rugby clubs and athletes. When I came on, the brand existed on paper — logo, some product — but there was no repeatable way to find customers, no outbound motion, and no system for turning interest into orders. It was a two-person operation with real ambition and no GTM infrastructure.

Rugby has a clear, structured universe of buyers — clubs, teams, and coaches organized by competition tier and region. I mapped it. Built a prospect list of 560 clubs and their key decision-makers using manual research and enrichment tools, then wrote sequence copy matched to each tier (youth clubs, collegiate, senior men's and women's). Launched cold email and LinkedIn outreach. Reply rates hit 12%, well above the industry floor for cold outbound in a niche sport.

Outbound gets attention; brand earns trust. I ran the content side of Vortex — match recaps, athlete spotlights, club stories — across Instagram and email. The goal was to make Vortex feel like it belonged in rugby, not like a vendor pitching it. Eight clubs signed direct kit partnerships in year one. Social grew 10× organically. The brand became recognizable inside the community we were selling to.

By the end of year one, Vortex had gone from a standing start to $50K in revenue — 5× growth — with no outside funding, no agency, and a two-person team. The outbound system ran without constant attention. The brand had a real following inside the sport. We had a repeatable playbook for adding new clubs each quarter. Everything was handed off documented and running.