Smyrna Business Outfits the Tiniest Sports Fans

True sports fans aren’t made, they’re born. And no one knows this better than Baby Fans, a Smyrna Web-based business that specializes in officially licensed school and team clothing and accessories for babies.

Todd Wilson, co-founder of Baby Fans, got the idea for his business when he became an uncle. He wanted to outfit his nieces and nephews with jerseys and onesies from his favorite teams, but couldn't find a place to buy them all at once. His friend and now business partner Josh Fraser was having the same difficulty.

“We both started having nieces and nephews and just had a really hard time finding places to buy multiple teams at one location,” Wilson said. “For example, my brother has four kids and his wife is a fan of one team and he’s a fan of another and I just couldn’t combine an order." 

Wilson and Fraser thought it would be convenient if people could buy clothes and accessories for multiple teams from multiple leagues at the same time, but it would be a few years before they realized they could turn their problem into a business.

In 2003 Wilson was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease.

“At the time I was going through cancer treatments and was bored at home; kind of toying with the idea of starting my own company,” he said. “So I kind of came up with the idea of Baby Fans.’’

Baby Fans launched its website, www.babyfans.com, in 2005 with about 10 college teams. In the beginning Baby Fans was just a hobby while Wilson maintained his full-time job at a collegiate licensing company. 

“I worked on it as a hobby and would work five days a week there and then come home and work on the site,” he said. “It was just me working here and building the website and packing orders and that kind of stuff. Eventually we started hiring one and then two and then three and then four and now we’re up to five and actually hiring another person this fall, which is exciting.”

Despite the economic recession, business has grown by leaps and bounds since 2005. Baby Fans now offers clothing, accessories and baby gear like strollers and nursery decorations for teams from Major League Baseball, the NFL, NASCAR and college. Wilson plans to add more teams and leagues in the coming months.

“We’re hoping to add the entire ACC and SEC by the end of the fall and add a few more NFL teams and a few more Major League Baseball teams,” he said. “And by the next NBA season we’re hoping to have about five to eight teams in general. We don’t carry the NBA right now and we’re also exploring hockey.”

Baby Fans has grown so much that Wilson is considering buying a larger warehouse and he’d like to keep the business in Smyrna.

“I live in Smyrna so I don’t want to work too far away from Smyrna,” he said. “It’s amazing how much space pacifiers and onesies and jerseys can take up when you have so many teams involved with our company.

The Baby Fans slogan, “once a fan always a fan,” illustrates how the business has been able to thrive despite the economic climate.

“We’re still kind of in that large spiking growth pattern and a lot of it has to do with we get a tremendous amount of repeat-customers,” he said. “Last year we had 22-percent of our customers repeat and place another order.”

Wilson attributes the high rate of customer satisfaction to the level of effort Baby Fans employees place in each order. All the clothes are neatly folded by hand and come wrapped in team-colored paper whether the item is meant to be given as a gift or not.

Wilson invites Smyrna-Vinings Patch readers to check out Baby Fans. Readers who place an order can enter the discount code “SMYVIN” at checkout and receive 20 percent off through July 15.