In 2017, two University of Sioux Falls graduates had an idea to create Platinum Bat Company, a business designed to supply area teams with high-quality baseball bats.

Seven years later, Platinum Bat Company and Platinum Baseball Company, have become more than just a local wood bat supplier, but a nationwide baseball brand.

Zak Wallner and Nick Ratzloff, former college baseball players at USF, are the co-founders of the business, and got the idea from their short time working in marketing after graduating.

“We graduated college and started a little social media marketing company,” said Wallner. “We were doing some advertising for some small businesses and E-Commerce businesses back in the hype of social media marketing times. We had a business that we were doing marketing for and we saw what they were doing and said ‘Well why don’t we just create our own business, we already know the marketing for it so let’s just do it ourselves.’ ”

Wallner and Ratzloff were unsure of what type of business they wanted to start, so they used their baseball background to spark an idea.

“Coming from baseball roots, both of us have had baseball part of our life since we were kids,” said Wallner. “So naturally we gravitated toward something baseball related, and I came up with the idea of starting with baseball bats and that’s where Platinum Bat Company came from.”

In the beginning stages the main goal of Platinum Bat Company was to be one of the next biggest bat companies there ever was. But as time went on, Wallner and Ratzloff knew to make it big elsewhere, you need to support the players in your backyard first.

“We really decided to focus more on the amateur baseball players, most of the guys that swing our bats are going to be 18 to 40+ years old,” said Wallner. “We still do a lot of work with the (Sioux Falls) Canaries and other independent baseball teams.”

Over the years Platinum Bat has evolved to more than just wooden bats, they’ve added custom trophy bats, fielding mitts, team uniforms, and even team apparel.

“The fun part about owning the business and also playing baseball is that I’m still around the game all the time, so I don’t have any limits to things I can add to our product mix,” said Wallner. “As I see needs, I fill them. I’m the pitching coach over at Sioux Falls Christian and they needed some batting practice coaches tops, so I said ‘Hey I think I can do those’, so we ended up doing quarter-zips for the coaches at batting practice.”

The range of products have gotten so wide that it’s created a broader name for the business, the Platinum Baseball Company.

“We still operate under both names, but it’s almost like we’re developing into just Platinum,” said Wallner. “When somebody says Platinum, they might initially think of Platinum Bats, but they also might think of how we did uniforms for a certain team or even custom batting gloves for a team, it’s becoming just the name Platinum.”

Of course the fully customizable wooden bats have been the company's top seller, reaching beyond the borders of South Dakota and even the United States.

‘It was around 2021 when we had officially sold a bat in all 50 states including Hawaii and Alaska, so we’ve covered the whole nation,” said Wallner. “We’ve also had a league in Australia that’ll buy a couple dozen bats, there’s guys in the professional baseball league down in Mexico that use our fielding mitts, in Germany we’ve got guys that use our bats and gloves, Canada as well.”

But Wallner says they still prioritize their market here at home, with South Dakota and Minnesota being the company’s biggest hubs.

“My main thing is taking care of the home base first, which is why I try to hook up as many amateur teams with deals on team bat orders and uniforms, and really take care of that footprint first,” Wallner said. 

In order to get Platinum into the MLB and MiLB, Platinum would need to pay for the licensing fee, something Wallner doesn’t feel is necessary and would stray from Platinum's goal.

“We just haven’t seen the need to pay for the licensing fee to be swung in the MLB, it’s something we talk about every year,” said Wallner. “It almost defeats the ‘For the players, by the players’ saying, where most of our market is amateur baseball guys that are just playing the game that they love, whereas when we step into the majors and minors, that’s a business market at that point.” 

Zak Wallner pitching for the Kimball/White Lake Nationals during the State B Amateur Baseball Tournament in Mitchell. (Ryan Deal / 605 Sports)

Wallner, a native to Amherst, Wisconsin, has played amateur baseball in both South Dakota and Minnesota since 2018, having played for the Kimball/White Lake Nationals for five seasons until joining the Flandreau Cardinals for the 2024 season, and has also played for the Kimball Express, a Class C amateur team in Minnesota, since 2018.

Ratzloff, a Sioux Falls O’Gorman graduate, joined the Menno MadFrogs for the 2024 season.