Racket Sports Manufacturer Boosts Multi-location Inventory Visibility with MRP Software

When Hydrogen Sports started seeing routine inventory miscounts in their procurement process, they realized that spreadsheet-based inventory control had become a major efficiency bottleneck. What followed was the implementation of a manufacturing ERP system.

Engineering a disruptor in racket sports manufacturing

Hydrogen Sports is a California-based manufacturer of compact tennis and pickleball ball machines. The company was founded in 2016 by former Apple engineer and designer of the Apple Pencil, Jonah Harley, who combined his engineering expertise and love for tennis to create an innovative ball launcher that fits into a small form factor. The flagship tennis machine, Proton, offers numerous advantages over the competition – it’s portable, app-controlled, and far more affordable, making advanced training technology accessible to everyone. Building on its success, the company has introduced a compact pickleball machine along with accessories like an optional serve stand for practicing serve and smash returns.

From its humble start seven years ago, Hydrogen Sports grew quickly, achieving nationwide sales within its first year. In a stroke of serendipity, demand surged during the pandemic as solo practice solutions gained popularity. Today, the company sells mostly direct-to-consumer, primarily to recreational players but also coaches, schools, and tennis clubs. The team remains small, with approximately 10 contract manufacturing staff building and shipping products at the Santa Clara facility, supported by a handful of engineering and support staff.

Growing pains exposed spreadsheet weaknesses

Each Hydrogen Sports machine contains around 170 parts from vendors in the US and abroad. As production scaled, keeping track of those components, along with their suppliers, quantities, and locations, quickly became a major challenge. Initially, the team managed procurement and stock with a custom spreadsheet, but it lacked real-time tracking. “There was no easy way to know exactly where a part was located or when it moved from storage into assembly. We needed to have eyes on our parts at all times, from procurement to shipping,” explains Director of Operations Novia Kaup.

With materials spread across multiple locations in the California factory and overseas suppliers, manually coordinating everything was becoming increasingly error-prone. Before long, the limitations of the spreadsheet approach led to real problems in the form of inventory errors and shrinkage. Discrepancies from miscounts meant the team sometimes discovered shortages at the last minute, resulting in production delays and write-offs. In one case, a shipment arrived with a significant percentage of unsuitable components – an issue that spreadsheets simply couldn’t anticipate or adjust for.

This finally pushed Hydrogen Sports to look for a more robust way to manage its stock and production efforts. “We were looking for the best practices in discrete manufacturing. We thought, what’s the best way to give eyes to our parts, their locations, and movements?” Novia explains. The answer turned out to be manufacturing software that could provide accurate inventory tracking, multi-location visibility, and better control over production.

Manufacturing software went live in a few short weeks

After committing to move beyond spreadsheets, Hydrogen Sports evaluated several inventory and manufacturing ERP systems. “We looked at four different platforms, and MRPeasy turned out to be the best fit for us,” Novia recalls. MRPeasy offered the right mix of functionality, affordability, and ease of use for a company of their size. Still, the team had some reservations before fully committing. The main worry was whether support would be responsive enough during implementation, since the staff was new to MRP systems.

 “A couple of times, we had questions where we needed to wait a few days to get a reply from MRPeasy. But the online tutorials and how-tos were a big help, and AI also helped a lot with the implementation!” Novia shares.

Implementation kicked off in late 2024 with a target go-live at the start of 2025. With support from an external consultant, the team spent the final weeks of the year cleaning and uploading product data, like parts lists and BOMs, and configuring MRPeasy to match their workflows. By January 1^st, the company was live on MRPeasy, ready to track inventory and purchase orders from day one of the new fiscal year.

Seamlessly tracking inventory across eight locations

Hydrogen Sports has four main users using the new system. Novia manages purchasing, while the others use it for their daily tasks. For example, one team member receives incoming shipments and keeps track of returns through the software, while the CEO can conveniently check sales reports anywhere and anytime. Novia comments on the system’s interface: “Switching to MRPeasy wasn’t a big learning curve – for someone new to manufacturing, I was able to pick it up pretty quickly.” 

The Hydrogen Sports team is relieved to finally have a purpose-built tool after years of patchwork inventory management. MRPeasy is primarily used to track the company’s stock lots, BOMs, and procurement activities. All inventory is logged in the system across the company’s eight locations, providing an instant view of on-hand quantities. When parts run low, the team creates a purchase order in MRPeasy, allowing the software to track the order status and update stock levels upon receipt.

“The beautiful thing with MRPeasy is that I can see our eight locations and understand exactly where any piece of inventory is. If something is running behind, it gets automatically highlighted in a central location. The visibility MRPeasy offers us is priceless because you don’t want to spend your time trying to understand where everything is and what you should have today,” Novia explains.

Scalable features ready for expanding the use case

Hydrogen Sports is managing sales in an intuitive way on MRPeasy. Instead of creating a record for every new customer, the team has set up a few generic customer profiles to consolidate orders. One generic customer profile represents their distributor’s weekly bulk order, while another covers warranty return orders. This lets them easily generate shipments and invoices without cluttering the database. However, the team is aware that per-customer order management is available, should the company opt for it.

Another area still on Hydrogen Sports’ roadmap is adopting more of MRPeasy’s production floor features. Currently, work-in-process and assembly scheduling happen outside the system. “We’re tracking inventory and finished goods, but not production yet – we’re planning to integrate that moving forward,” Novia notes. The company intends to introduce shop-floor reporting and manufacturing orders in MRPeasy once the internal workflow is adjusted to fit the best practice.

This phased approach has served Hydrogen Sports well so far and reflects a proven ERP implementation best practice. Tackle most pressing needs first and expand into other functionalities when you’re ready. Even without every feature enabled, Hydrogen Sports is already realizing major improvements from MRPeasy and has a clear path to leverage more of the system as the production line refines its operations.

Operational clarity, lower stress, and fast ROI

Implementing MRPeasy has delivered considerable efficiency boosts for Hydrogen Sports in their first year of using it. Most importantly, there has been a leap in inventory accuracy and visibility. With all parts now tracked in one place, the team has reliable, real-time insight into stock levels across all locations, virtually eliminating surprise stockouts or missing components. “My stress is much lower,” Novia laughs. “Our write-offs are way down because we have a firmer grasp of what’s in-house.”

Another major win is the time and effort saved by automating previously manual processes. Tasks that once required tedious spreadsheet work are now handled seamlessly by MRPeasy. And if a delivery is delayed or a component is running low, the system automatically flags it, so there’s no need to chase that information. They’ve effectively traded hours of administrative busywork for a few minutes of checking MRPeasy’s dashboard.

As Novia points out: “Spreadsheets are great, but let’s talk about how much your time costs. Two extra hours catching up on inventory versus logging into MRPeasy and knowing your requirements instantly? You end up paying far less for the subscription than you do in lost hours.”

For Hydrogen Sports, MRPeasy’s user-friendly design has made modern manufacturing best practices accessible to a team without deep ERP experience. Even employees with no previous ERP background learned it quickly, and what initially seemed intimidating has actually simplified their work. Novia calls the software a “game-changer, pure and simple,” for bringing organization and granular tracking to their processes.

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