Hydrogen Sports is a California-based company producing ball machines for racket sports. It was founded in 2016 by former Apple engineer Jonah Harley, who combined his engineering expertise and love for tennis to create a portable and affordable tennis ball launcher.
From its humble, partially crowdfunded start seven years ago, Hydrogen Sports grew fast, achieving nationwide D2C sales within its first year. Today, it employs around 15 contract manufacturers, engineers, and support staff.
Growing pains exposed spreadsheet weaknesses
Each Hydrogen Sports machine contains around 170 parts from vendors in the US and abroad. Initially, spreadsheets were used to manage inventory, but as production scaled, this approach became a hindrance. “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,” explains Director of Operations Novia Kaup.
Lacking real-time visibility over their multi-location inventory led to constant errors and shrinkage. At times, the team discovered shortages at the last minute, resulting in production delays and write-offs. This prompted Hydrogen Sports to seek a more robust way to manage its stock and production efforts. “We thought, what’s the best way to give eyes to our parts, their locations, and movements?” Novia explains. The answer was modern manufacturing ERP software.
Manufacturing software went live in a few short weeks
Hydrogen Sports evaluated several 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. Implementation commenced in late 2024, with a target go-live date at the start of 2025.
With support from an external consultant, the team spent a few weeks cleaning and uploading product data and configuring MRPeasy to match their workflows. By January 1st, 2025, the company was live on MRPeasy.
Seamlessly tracking inventory across eight locations
Hydrogen Sports has four users on MRPeasy. Novia manages purchasing, while another team member receives incoming shipments and tracks returns. The CEO can check sales reports anywhere and at any time. Novia comments: “Switching to MRPeasy wasn’t a big learning curve – for someone new to manufacturing, I was able to pick it up pretty quickly.”
MRPeasy is primarily used to track the company’s stock lots, BOMs, and procurement. All inventory is logged in the system, 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. The visibility it offers is priceless,” Novia explains.
Scalable features ready for expanding the use case
Hydrogen Sports manages sales intuitively in MRPeasy. One generic customer profile represents their distributor’s weekly bulk order, while another covers returns. This lets them generate shipments and invoices without cluttering the database, although per-customer order management is in the roadmap. The company is also gearing up to adopt MRPeasy’s shop floor features, as today, WIP and scheduling still happen outside the system.
This phased approach has served Hydrogen Sports well so far and reflects a proven ERP implementation best practice – tackle pressing needs first and expand into other functionalities when you’re ready.
Operational clarity, lower stress, and fast ROI
Implementing MRPeasy has considerably boosted efficiency for Hydrogen Sports. There has been a leap in inventory accuracy and visibility, and the team has reliable, real-time insight into stock levels, virtually eliminating surprise shortages 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. If a delivery is delayed or a component is running low, the system automatically flags it. As Novia points out: “Spreadsheets are great, but let’s talk about time costs. Two extra hours catching up on inventory daily, versus logging in and knowing your requirements instantly? We pay far less for the subscription than for the lost hours. MRPeasy is a game-changer, pure and simple, for bringing organization to our processes.”
For more information, visit MRPeasy.
