Putting the Player Front & Center: 44 Pro on Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Brand Strategy · Content Strategy · UX/UI Design · Creative & Art Direction · Shopify Plus Development
Who is 44 Pro?
In 2011, Brent Habert and his father started building custom baseball gloves out of San Diego. The market they saw was real: custom gloves ran $600, came with limited options, and you had to know somebody. They made them attainable, then went out and earned the community one opening day at a time.
Fifteen years later, it's the credible challenger in a category Rawlings and Wilson own, and it got there on attention to detail. A 44 Pro glove is built to spec: the size, the web, the fit, down to the look that makes it yours.
The Challenge: How Do You Launch Stock Without Cheapening Custom?
44 Pro came to Bear at a genuine inflection point: preparing to sell stock gloves for the first time, without a strong brand identity to sell them. The founders had bought the company back in 2024, they were about six months into retail, a more premium Elite line was coming, and they were migrating to Shopify. The business had outgrown the site.
- Introduce the brand. High-intent buyers found what they wanted. Everyone else got dropped into a build tool with no sense of who 44 Pro is or why the leather is worth it.
- Explain the range. Elite, Signature, and Select are real quality and price tiers, with nowhere on the site to say so.
- Merchandise stock. As retail partnerships grew, the site had no real way to show the gloves a parent had just seen at Dick's.
- Design for mobile. 76% of traffic and 67% of conversion were mobile, on a layout that wasn't built for it.
The Solution: Gloves for Players, Not Just the Game
The positioning came out of what Brent already knew about his own brand: other companies made gloves for baseball. 44 Pro makes gloves for baseball players.
That reframed the premium question. 44 Pro doesn't need to cost more to be worth more; it needs to show the craft, the made-to-order process, and the players who trust it.
- Built a brand narrative, art direction, and photography approach rooted in place: southern california year-round baseball
- Rebuilt the shopping paths around sport first (baseball and softball) then series and position, where most competitors offer position alone
- Surfaced the Elite, Signature, and Select series across the homepage, PLPs, PDPs, and into the customizer itself
- Opened a path from a stock glove page into the customizer, and gave Team 44 Pro player gloves real product pages
California Baseball, 365 Days a Year
Project at A Glance
Series as the front door: Elite, Signature, and Select sit at the top of every glove page, with a section below on what sets each apart.
Customize anything: Find a stock glove you like, then step into the customizer to change the single detail you want.
The glove as object: Photography and layout treat the glove as a designed thing worth looking at, with the noise stripped away.
Players up front: Major leaguers moved forward on the homepage, and Team 44 Pro gloves finally have pages of their own.
The Result: A Brand Ready for Opening Day
YoY Conversion Lift
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