By Stacey Shannon—
MIDDLETOWN, IN—When the father and son duo who started Baseball Card World in 1981 to focus on baseball cards and their supplies decided in the early 1990s to get out of the industry, their employee Jay Brownell saw an opportunity. By 1995, Jay purchased the company and broadened the product line to include other items as well. He changed the name to BCW Supplies.
Then when Jay’s son, Eric, graduated from Ball State University with a marketing degree, he joined the family business, so it became once again a father and son enterprise.
Previously, BCW sold its products only by catalog. Fresh out of college, Eric saw potential in moving the company into online sales, launching the consumer site in 1999. By August 2003, a site for wholesale suppliers was added.
Since then, BCW has grown by leaps and bounds. Eric became the company’s president in August 2009 and has continued building on his father’s legacy.
These days BCW sells a variety of products for storing, protecting and displaying collections to consumers, retailers and wholesalers. They offer supplies for comics, cards, games, music, memorabilia, coins and currency, photos and more.
Eric Brownell
“Without organization and protection of your collection, it’s really not a collection,” Eric said. “It’s just a bunch of cards in a box.”
The entire BCW catalog is online for consumers and retailers. Eric said the company is also in the process of distributing through Amazon. Previously Amazon sales of BCW products were handled by other distributors. BCW is slowly taking over to help ensure customers get their products quicker and more efficiently.
“Our products are very popular on Amazon,” Eric said.
Partly that popularity comes from BCW Supplies’ willingness to evolve with and add new product lines through the years. For example, in 2015, BCW launched a line of gaming card storage supplies at GenCon in Indianapolis with seven different products in five different colors. Attending the annual convention of gamers boosted BCW successfully into the gaming category.
Now the company has a wide line of gaming related products and storage supplies for sale on its website as well as through retailers globally.
“We’re one of the smaller brands in the [gaming] market still, which means we have a ton of growth opportunity,” Eric said.
Growing is certainly something the company has been doing. BCW started with a 70,000 square foot facility in Anderson then purchased a 35,000 square foot warehouse. When those two spaces weren’t enough, Eric said he knew it was time to relocate.
His goal was to find somewhere nearby that would allow for enough space for both BCW’s manufacturing and warehouse under one roof.
“We’re really happy we’re in this area,” Eric said. “We’re ecstatic that we’re able to have a thriving business in this community, and we’re able to provide jobs.”
While Anderson didn’t have what BCW needed, the company found the ideal space in nearby Middletown, completed renovations and moved in in 2021. Eric said the new location not only gives his company more space but allows him to find employees from other cities as well, such as Muncie.
“We are able to find great employees,” Eric said. “We’ve found this spot, and we’ve totally renovated it inside and out. We feel like we’re out in the country. But we still are close enough to everything to get to it.”
Now, just three years later, he is already looking at plans for expanding the current building further as BCW Supplies continues to grow.
Though BCW doesn’t have its own local storefront, Eric said local customers can place orders online and pick them up in person. Local retailers are also supportive in carrying products from BCW and can be a great place to find items as well.
Locally, BCW products are sold at Aw Yeah Comics, Three Strikes Sports Cards, Fiction Boulevard, Next Level Games, Atomic Games, Bob’s Comic Castle, Locked Groove Records, Electric Crayon Records, P2 Collectible, Wizards Keep, Generation Sports Cards and All Star Sports Cards.