Fanatics, Inc.

It was the summer of 2020. Jim Welles, the director of a fulfillment center in Las Vegas for Fanatics, Inc. (Fanatics), and his team needed to make inventory and staffing decisions to support shipments of official National Football League (NFL) replica jerseys for the upcoming fall season. In a typical year, Welles and his planning team would order jerseys and plan staffing levels based on sales forecasts that largely relied on historical data. This was not a typical year. Welles and his team had been scrambling all summer to install new equipment and establish new protocols to keep workers safe in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they now had a very short time to get ready for the fall season. Fanatics offered a huge and varied product selection, in part so that it could take advantage of “micro-moments”—events that might make fans suddenly want a particular jersey or T-shirt. Fanatics had carved out a niche by serving this market, honing its manufacturing and distribution process to fit the real-time expectations of leagues, teams, fans, and retailers. This case introduces students to Fanatics’ history and presents the operations challenges it faces in 2020, with major changes to sporting events as well as supply-chain issues. At the Darden School of Business, it is taught in the first-year core Operations Management class; it would also be suitable in a module covering supply chain management.