When Baseball Is Your Lifestyle, Routine Gets It

The new fall lineup from Routine has more than a fashion chino jogger or a sweet new hoodie. Routine has a fashion chino jogger with baseball pant-inspired stitching, a subtly stitched home plate on the side and inside pockets printed with an image of seeds. The hoodies use stitching designed to mimic the seams of a baseball and lines that subtly make up a home plate.

“We are keeping up with the trends of what is in the industry,” says Routine co-owner Michael DeGrave, “and figure out ways to tie it into baseball.” The joggers fit that mold, giving the baseball lifestyle brand a trendy fashion piece but with a baseball tie. “They are all things to tie into the game of baseball, but if someone saw you wearing the pant they would have no idea it is a baseball-related pant. The kid wearing it knows it ties into baseball but is still a nice piece you can wear out.”

Routine, based outside of Milwaukee, launched in 2011 as a way to tap into streetwear with a baseball twist, merging the gap between cool clothing and the corporate-type tees, as DeGrave calls them, that showed off your favorite teams. “Whey not have something that fits this lifestyle for baseball?” he says. “We all wore streetwear brands that tied into what was going on in pop culture and what was trending and we tied it into the game we played growing up, which is baseball.”

Now Routine has a wide-ranging focus well beyond just t-shirts and hats. For the past few years the brand has had full spring and fall fashion releases. This fall’s line signifies its most trend-forward cut and sew designs, all done in-house. With an entire line of hoodies, pants and a workout suit, the fall line has received a powerful response, most from the types of products the Routine team knew were outside the norm. One of the top sellers from the fall is the Swinging Lumber flannel hoodie. “It is killing it,” DeGrave says. “We were iffy on how it was going to do and people are loving it.”

The same for the Chance the Rapper-inspired Fozy Sherpa quarter-zip. “We got samples in and I said I don’t know if this is our market,” he says. “Now it is our second-best seller. The things we are dong are so much different than what everyone else is doing with a standard hoodie. Our pieces are different and setting us apart.”

Along with the two main lines each season, Routine places a focus on its “fast fashion,” which heavily ties into the MLBPA license the brand just partnered on. With fast fashion, Routine can catch a moment in baseball, such as when Andre Beltre got ejected in the summer for moving the on-deck circle. Routine immediately launched a new shirt about on deck being where the circle is. They also have a popular “No Participation Trophies” shirt based off Bryce Harper comments. “We use our creativity to tie into the license and tie into our edginess,” DeGrave says. “We are still different from all the others doing licensed apparel. We are still Routine. It is something different really not on the market.”

Routine prides itself on the fast fashion’s speed, launching a new product every week or two, catching the speed and tone that larger brands simply can’t duplicate, DeGrave says.

Routine decided to enter the license fray as a way to move beyond an ecommerce brand. Instead of starting retail locations, the license opportunity puts products in team stores across the country, as well as on the Fanatics site, getting product in front of people without having to enter the retail side themselves.

Even with the fast fashion and new releases, Routine’s history ties to T-shirts and hats. And some of those designs still define a company, such as the “Wendy Peffercorn is a Dime” shirt–an obvious tie to The Sandlot–that has proven a mainstay for years. From the Wendy shirt to chino joggers with a seed pattern pocket lining, Routine aims to embrace the lifestyle of baseball, no matter the life or style.

Tim Newcomb covers gear and business for Baseball America. Follow him on Twitter at @tdnewcomb.