4Topps’ business blew up with mesh seats; now it’s becoming more than a seating company
WHEN ORLANDO CITY SC decided it needed to change an underselling corner of Inter&Co Stadium, the club didn’t turn to an architect or contractor. It worked with 4Topps, the company that first brought mesh seats to the sports venue market 11 years ago and is becoming much more than a seating provider now.
The project saw 300 seats stripped out of the section and replaced with 34 total two- and four-top tables with mesh swivel seats. Orlando City created a premium product there featuring all-inclusive food and beverage and in-seat mobile ordering through QR codes. The financial impact was large, said Cameron Caddell, Orlando City vice president of ticket sales and member experience. Where the previous seats sold for $594 (for an Orlando City season membership; $140 for the Orlando Pride), the twotop tables sell for $8,000 annually, while the four-tops go for $15,000, all on two or three-year agreements. Several weeks into the 2024 Major League Soccer and National Women’s Soccer League seasons, only a few remain unsold.
“While they are a seating company, because the solution they offer can be used as a general seat, a barstool, a four-top, I do look at them as a fan experience company at the same time,” said Caddell.
That’s how Winston-Salem, N.C.-based 4Topps is viewing itself, too. The 13-year-old company no longer just sells its products, including the widely popular mesh seat. Through a newly launched consultancy called Seat Revenue Advisors, it’s guiding clients on how to generate revenue by identifying underutilized or underperforming portions of seating bowls and helping clients flip them into contractually obligated, income-generating premium areas, such as in Orlando.
4Topps has its products, including its namesake four-top table, in 250 sports venues, nearly all of them outdoor stadiums. The company’s revenue doubled from 2021 to 2023, said President Deron Nardo, and it’s expected to double again by 2025. 4Topps’ mesh seat has been so well received by the sports industry that competitors such as Irwin and Learfield have created mesh seating products in response.
The company also is launching a direct-to-consumer furniture business, selling the very chairs it puts in stadiums to its clients’ fans, and it’s eyeing the indoor venue seating market, which it hasn’t entered yet.
“Seating companies aren’t often looked at like this, they’re often looked at as vendor suppliers,” Nardo said. “So, what’s really fueled my obsession with this is we’re really piling on some success stories.”
‘TURN IT UP TO PREMIUM’
Joe Bellissimo founded 4Topps on the back of the mesh seat, which immediately met a market need for a more durable, less heat- and water-absorbent seat. The product line expanded to eight seating products, loose furniture and drink rails. A simple railing around the top of a seating bowl could become a ticketed revenue generator.
“It doesn’t matter where in a venue,” Nardo said. “If a team or school decides they want to turn it up to premium, we can do that.”
Just this spring, 4Topps completed work of varying degrees for the Washington Commanders, Philadelphia Union, Chicago White Sox and Kansas City Royals, as well as college projects at Cincinnati, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, BYU and Oklahoma softball’s Love Field, and the KC Current’s CPKC Stadium.
The St. Louis Cardinals created the Budweiser 703 Club at Busch Stadium this past offseason with the help of 4Topps, converting an open-air, general admission seating area into a premium area with 350 4Topps mesh seats and side tables. The side tables meant less furniture was needed in the club, giving it a roomier feel. The 703 Club, named for Albert Pujols’ home run total, has sold out every game.
The Cardinals made clear to Nardo that the 703 Club was a test run for 4Topps seats at Busch Stadium. The next step would be to introduce the seats in uncovered areas of the stadium, the same kind of expansion interest 4Topps is seeing from many of its clients.
“Can this be the seat of the future for us?” said Matt Gifford, Cardinals vice president of stadium operations. “That’s what we’re waiting to find out.”
NEW LINES OF BUSINESS
Nardo and company have walked stadiums for a dozen years, flipping seating sections stuck under scoreboards or baked by the sun into revenue generators. Increasingly, the company was being called by clients not for RFP responses but advice. Seat Revenue Advisors can provide financial modeling and potential ROI, as well as renderings that can be used to sell to fans or sponsors.
“We’ve had unparalleled access to conversations and data across college and pro markets,” Nardo said. “Listening to a customer telling you why something’s working or not working really is why I think we’re the best suited in the marketplace, full stop, to tell people what to do with their seating bowls.”
The consultancy will be followed shortly by the direct-to-consumer business, which rolled out May 1. The company is pursuing licensing agreements so it can sell the type of chairs fans sit in at their favorite team’s stadium to the public.
4Topps hired a designer from the famed Herman Miller furniture firm to create the 2.0 version of its mesh seat with different patterns and densities of mesh, and more curvature and contour better suited for indoor sports venues. Las Vegas Ballpark is the only stadium with all 4Topps seating.
To meet new opportunities, 4Topps has grown from six full-time employees at the end of 2021 (after a pandemic-caused thinning of its ranks) to 16 now, with plans to have 20 to 22 by the end of this year.
“I’ve always viewed our business as a little bit of vision, a lot of dreaming, but really focused on the next three or four steps,” Nardo said. “This business can be exponentially bigger than we ever thought it would be. The way that the market is changing, the way it’s growing, I look at the business very differently now.”
Bret McCormick can be reached at bmccormick@sportsbusinessjournal.com.