Summary
CHALLENGE
- Launching a brand-new fielder’s mask in a category that had gone unchanged for 15 years.
- A safety-critical product where trust had to be earned before a parent would buy.
- No established reputation to lean on for a first-of-its-kind design.
SOLUTION
- An affiliate program built around voices already respected inside the sport.
- Flexible commission tiers tailored to each type of partner.
- Organic recruitment fuelled by a trusted in-game presence and customer reviews.
RESULTS
- Grew to 100 to 120 affiliates in the months after a February launch.
- New affiliates joining roughly every other day, with no paid affiliate recruiting.
- A monthly affiliate contest, running since March, to reward top performers.
LESSONS
- Social proof from trusted sources can carry a new product faster than ads.
- Flexible commission terms let one program serve coaches, clubs, and governing bodies.
- Simplicity for affiliates matters as much as simplicity for the merchant.
Neo Softball set out to fix a problem the sport had tolerated for 15 years.
In female fastpitch softball, the most vulnerable part of any player is her face. The fielder’s mask had barely changed in a decade and a half, still a steel cage held on by elastic straps that shift and slide during play.
Neo Softball reengineered it around a dial-fit ratchet system, the same idea behind a bike or skate helmet, after five years in development.
The mask launched in February. The harder question was how to earn trust for a product nobody had seen before, in a category where failure carries real consequences. Neo Softball’s answer was an affiliate program built entirely on credibility.
Why did Neo Softball launch with affiliates instead of ads?
Neo Softball wasn’t selling a new flavour of an existing product. It was introducing mechanics the market had never seen, in a category where a failure isn’t just an inconvenience.
That raised the bar on trust. Families needed to hear from people they already respected before they would put a new mask on a child’s face.
This isn’t just another t-shirt. This protects the kid’s face… We needed to build social proof from trusted sources as fast as possible.
Adam Glickman, Neo Softball
Affiliate marketing gave the brand a way to put credible, familiar voices in front of the exact families making that decision. That was the point of the program from day one.
How does Neo Softball tailor commissions to every kind of affiliate?
Neo Softball runs roughly ten affiliate programs, not one. Each carries different terms because each serves a different kind of partner.
The standard program pays a 10% commission alongside a 10% customer discount. Larger partners negotiate higher rates, around 15% or 17%, and the biggest governing bodies, with access to thousands of potential customers, receive the most generous terms.
The range of partners is wide. An affiliate might be a single coach or an influencer in the game. It might be a parent who signs up on behalf of their child, because even though she’s 12 years old, she has 10,000 followers. It might be a club running dozens of teams, or a governing body for the sport itself.
Because we have so many different kinds of affiliates, we need the ability to craft different kinds of arrangements, and UpPromote makes it very, very easy to do so.
Adam Glickman, Neo Softball
That flexibility let one program stretch across coaches, clubs, and national bodies without forcing every partner into the same deal.
How did Neo Softball reach 100+ affiliates without recruiting them?
Neo Softball didn’t advertise for affiliates. The roster grew organically, and the right people found their way in.
Leading with credibility
Adam Glickman has spent 15 years in the sport as a softball dad, a coach, and a general manager of national teams.
He shows up on Facebook as himself, not as the company and not through paid ads, and talks about the mask directly.
That authenticity matters, because selling through social media backfires the moment it feels staged. His standing in the game let the brand join the conversation credibly from the start.
Letting the right people self-select
Because the program is organic, it draws partners who already believe in the product. New affiliates sign up roughly every other day.
We don’t advertise for affiliates. It’s all organic for the most part… getting the right people, people of influence within the game, within the sport, people of credibility.
Adam Glickman, Neo Softball
Rewarding the top performers
Since March, Neo Softball has run a monthly affiliate contest. The top three affiliates each month win either free product or a cash payout.
The top three affiliates win prizes every month. They either win free product or a cash payout.
Adam Glickman, Neo Softball
The contest gives the strongest partners a reason to push harder, month after month.
What does Neo Softball value most in UpPromote?
Adam has worked in e-commerce since 1996 and evaluated plenty of tools along the way. Two things stand out to him about UpPromote: it’s reliable, and it’s simple.
What I appreciate most is: one, it works. It’s reliable. But the real driver is the simplicity…, for the merchant and for the affiliates.
Adam Glickman, Neo Softball
Simplicity for affiliates is the part he stresses. Some are tech-savvy and some aren’t, so removing barriers is crucial. Affiliates get an email when a sale comes in and another when it’s approved, and they can log into their portal to track results in real time.
For a program spread across so many partner types, keeping the experience effortless on both sides is what makes the roster easy to grow.
How do reviews and affiliates feed each other at Neo Softball?
The affiliate program doesn’t run in isolation. Neo Softball collects customer reviews through Loox and pairs them with an Instagram feed, so first-time visitors land on a page already full of proof.
Our product reviews fuel our affiliate program, and our affiliate program fuels our product reviews… It’s all about social proof from trusted sources.
Adam Glickman, Neo Softball
Reviews bring credibility to the affiliates, and the affiliates drive the traffic that produces more reviews. Each loop makes the next one easier.
What are the results so far, and what comes next?
In the months since its February launch, Neo Softball built a roster of 100 to 120 affiliates, with no spending on affiliate recruiting.
New partners keep arriving roughly every other day, and the monthly contest keeps the top tier engaged. The mask itself now carries hundreds of customer reviews, deepening the social proof that draws the next wave of affiliates in.
The one piece the team wants to streamline is payouts. Affiliate payments are still handled manually each month, and the team is looking to automate that process as the program scales.
People want to be a part of something they’re excited about… when they find a product they really believe in, it’s easier to attract the right people and inspire them to be engaged.
Adam Glickman, Neo Softball
For a brand-new product in a safety-critical category, that trust, earned through credible voices and reinforced by reviews, has been the engine behind Neo Softball’s early growth.
