Set up the net where their buyer already was, let strangers play all day, and close the ones who asked on the spot with Venmo and a box from the trunk.

“We'd set up the net, get people to play”

Chris credits getting physically in front of customers as the thing that moved the business forward at a point when they could not afford anything else.

“What really started to move things along was constantly getting in front of our customers.”

Shoot content at the beach during the day, sell one net to cover food and rebuy two units, then put $100 or $200 on the credit card at night to run ads on that footage.

“we'd run Facebook ads on the videos we shot that night”

The spend kept sales trickling but never compounded, and after twelve months of it Chris was close to calling the whole thing off.

“I'm wrestling between giving up, going back to my full time job and just calling the entire thing off.”

They sent free sets to players in the niche with no brief and no expectations. Months later one of them, a European volleyball player, posted an unpolished clip of himself diving and spiking on a CROSSNET.

“this random video surfaces from a volleyball player in Europe that we had sent a set to months ago”

Chris puts it down to the clip being real rather than produced. Nothing about it was staged, briefed or lit, and that is what carried it.

“A real athlete, doing real things, having real fun. No brand guidelines. No lighting kit.”

Chris cold messaged retail buyers on LinkedIn one at a time, writing like a person rather than a corporate pitch.

“I cold-DM'd buyers. But I didn't pitch like a robot full of corporate jargon.”

He attributes the replies to the plain register of the message, not to the offer or to any warm introduction.

“I used clear language and a personal tone. That's what worked.”

Alongside the DMs they cold called the big chains and pitched every outdoor store and summer camp in the country.

“I made cold calls to Dick's Sporting Goods and Walmart until someone finally picked up.”

Each buyer who said yes became the reference that unlocked the next one.

“One retail buyer taking a chance on us led to another, and then another.”

Their first account was two Scheels locations. They visited stores, checked placement and collected feedback from managers until they could show the product moved, then expanded to more than 30 stores in the same chain.

“CROSSNET's first account was a store called Scheels who only took us on for two locations.”

Getting on a shelf was the easy half. The work was proving sell through before asking for more doors.

“It took us nearly six months to find out a way to drive demand”

They optimised the listing with strong images, detailed copy and keyword rich titles, ran Amazon ads against a 10 ROAS target, and pointed their own paid traffic at the listing rather than at their site.

“We became the #1 volleyball net on Amazon and started funneling paid traffic there instead of our site.”

They accepted the thinner margin because the same traffic simply converted better on Amazon than on their own store.

“The conversions were just better.”

They kept some products exclusive to their own store to pull buyers onto the higher margin channel, and from 2024 built a dedicated landing page per product instead of sending traffic to a generic product page.

“We also have products that are ONLY available on our Shopify to force customers to shop on our site”

The store is where they control the whole experience and where the analytics let them spot problems early.

“It's where we have complete control over the customer experience, from the first click to the final purchase.”

They bought daytime news programming to reach mothers planning family activities, and wrote the ads for recall rather than for an immediate purchase.

“day time news programing was a great way to target mothers who were planning their week”

Chris treats TV as awareness that lifts the other channels rather than as a direct response buy.

“TV ads weren't about driving immediate sales; they were about building brand awareness and trust.”

In small retail markets they bought cheap billboards pointing at the local stockist.

“we ran hyper-local billboard campaigns: "Now Selling CROSSNET, Exit 82."”

The inventory was cheap and often unsold afterwards, so the boards stayed up past what they had paid for.

“They cost nothing. And half the time, no one bought the space after us”

They kept a presence in physical education and gifting catalogs and spent nothing to market the channel.

“One of our most unexpected successes came from the physical education and gifting catalog channel.”

Chris reads it as proof that being present in the right places pays even where the channel looks small.

“We hadn't spent a dime on marketing for that channel”

They picked one or two shows a year where their buyer already gathers, such as the Boy Scouts of America conference, and sold from the booth.

“there are at least 1-2 trade shows every year that are 100% worth your attention and effort”

At the right show the volume beat anything they could buy. A physical education show in Atlantic City did about $20,000 a day.

“we were up in Atlantic City for a physical education show and we're doing about $20,000 per day”