At 3:25pm I placed an order and found out that 600 orders had already been placed before me. I checked in at the 24-hour mark and found out that over 2300 orders had been placed.

$75 Average Order Value

It is impossible for me to know exactly what their average order value is but by looking at a couple of data points, I estimate that their average order value is around $75.

The lowest a person could spend was $66 ($60 for swim trunks plus shipping). However, there were bundle options for $120-$140. By sorting their products on their website by best selling, I can see that 7 of their top 8 best selling items are between $60-$65. The 8th best-selling item is a bundle for $125.

Also many styles of the swim trunks are now sold out, which signals to me those were the most popular items to purchase.

The theory is, the vast majority of people placed an order for one item of $60-$65. Then you have people that bought the bundles or bought multiple items in one order. 

My best guess is that their average order value is around $75. Which means with 2300 orders at AOV of $75, they generated north of $170K in sales in under 24 hours.

Zero Advertising Dollars Spent

This is a great example of the “Barstool Machine”. Unlike most other companies, Barstool does not have to spend money to get their product in front of an audience. Barstool already owns their audience with their blog, with their social media accounts, and with their email list. 

They have the audience, they just have to sell into it.

Another great feature is that each one of their content creators is an influencer. A brand would pay between $1K – $50K to get any one of their creators to post on their social accounts about their product. Barstool employs these creators so they do not have to pay anything for that exposure.

Barstool had 10-15 of their content creators posting about the release of Balls Beachwear on Friday. Dave Portnoy posted, Big Cat Posted, Ria Posted, Glenny Posted, The Main Barstool account posted, and on and on. They reached 10s of millions of people with this release.

If a brand approached the Barstool content creators and got them all to post for their product like they did for Balls Beachwear, it would have cost close to $100K. But Barstool doesn’t have to pay that.

That is the Barstool Machine. They have built a loyal and engaged audience through their content. Which took many years, but now they are able to release a new product line and sell $170K in 24 hours.

Interesting note:

They created a store just for Balls Beachwear rather than selling it on their Barstool Sports store. I am curious why they decided this product line needed to have its own store. I wonder if there are bigger things they are planning for this brand.