How JustBats built trust & loyalty during a record-breaking product drop

Pro Athlete Inc. has been supplying athletes with the sporting goods they need since the 1980s. In 2000, they launched JustBats, and in the two decades since, the brand has become the go-to online destination and leading experts on softball bats and baseball bats. From Click to Hit, JustBats provides unparalleled advice, personalization, and customer support for athletes at any stage of their career.

Earlier this year, a new line of extremely popular baseball bats created by COMBAT MFG unexpectedly caused technical challenges for the JustBats team. Discover how JustBats used Queue-it to overcome these challenges, streamline their product launch process, and achieve a grand slam with their customers.

Fan favorite baseball gear company COMBAT MFG relaunched their brand in early 2025, with JustBats as one of the few retailers of their newest bat. COMBAT’s high-quality bats, strong influencer marketing strategy, and product drop strategy drove huge hype for each launch of its collection.

 “We’d never seen anything like it before,” says John Palmer, Content Marketing Manager at Pro Athlete. “COMBAT did a great job of recreating the limited-edition drop model from the sneaker world, partnering with influencers and driving that sense of urgency and scarcity. That strategy worked better than we could have ever expected.”

The launch of the new COMBAT bats drove unprecedented traffic to JustBats’ website, Palmer says. “We sold out almost instantly, but the huge traffic demands created challenges with traffic management and inventory availability that the team needed to figure out how to solve moving forward.”

As a company that prides itself on top-tier customer service, the JustBats team went to work on finding a solution to provide customers with a fair and user-friendly experience for future high-demand drops—the next one less than a month away. "When COMBAT MFG told us they'd had good results with Queue-it, we reached out and were set up and ready for the next drop within just a few weeks," added Palmer.

"Our launch with Queue-it exceeded expectations in every way," says Palmer.

An hour before the drop went live, the JustBats team activated their scheduled waiting room in pre-queue mode to collect early visitors and ensure fair access.

“Our team was in an online ‘war room’ with Queue-it support, and we were all just watching the number of people coming in go higher and higher,” Palmer says. “When the drop went live, we started sending people from the waiting room through to our site and saw extremely high conversion rates.”

“We sold out fast without experiencing any of the issues we had during our previous drop. When we got close to selling out, we just lowered the outflow of visitors in the Queue-it platform and disabled the low-inventory SKU, which prevented any inventory issues. The site stayed up and running throughout the whole drop.”

John Palmer, Content Marketing Manager, Pro Athlete

There was a “night and day difference” between JustBats’ first COMBAT drop, and their one with Queue-it, Palmer says. “Essentially, every metric we track was in the green:

• Our sales for the day increased 400% YoY
• Our conversion rate was triple what we usually see
• Traffic throughout the day was more than double our average
• We saw a 96% reduction in support requests compared to the previous drop
• We had a 90% reduction in post-sale clean-up and admin compared to the previous drop"

“All those numbers are amazing for us and our team,” says Kaleb Gilliland, Director of IT and Development at JustBats, “But what we’re most proud of is just the sheer number of bats we put into the hands of genuine players."

"By limiting the number of bats available per purchase and controlling access with Queue-it, we were able to deliver a much fairer sales experience for our customers and limit the impact of bots and scalpers.”

Kaleb Gilliland, Director of IT & Development, JustBats

With the COMBAT MFG launch, the JustBats team aimed to provide the same high-quality customer experience they deliver every day—and to do it at scale. According to Palmer, they achieved that:

“We got a lot of positive feedback and comments on our social media, email, and post-purchase survey. People saw and appreciated the difference compared to our previous drops and the effort we put into making sure this one went right. Improving the experience during drops isn’t just about a day of good sales for us; it’s about building trust and hopefully providing bats to these players throughout their careers. We saw a huge spike in our loyalty program sign-ups that day, which is a strong signal we achieved that.”

To ensure a smooth experience, the JustBats team designed a custom waiting room for their drop, prioritizing clear communication and aligned brand imagery. 

“We designed our waiting room to match our brand, promote the bats, and keep customers informed,” Palmer says. “We used the real-time messaging feature to send updates to customers on inventory availability, which they appreciated. Then we added a rolling banner to the top announcing our next drop, to encourage future sales.”

With the confidence they can handle peak traffic, the JustBats team has returned their focus to what they do best: providing high-quality products and top-tier service to athletes across the United States.

“Based on the experience we had with Queue-it, we’re planning to use it multiple times throughout the year, not just on the COMBAT drops but for other bat launches too,” says Palmer. “Even if we didn’t need Queue-it, I’d still recommend it, just for the improved customer experience it enables and the level of proactive support and expertise from the team.”