Want to buy a $275 soccer ball? Get in line for one from this designer

ST. LOUIS — Jon-Paul Wheatley creates intricately designed soccer balls that sell for hundreds of dollars. And instead of being untouchable collector’s items, he wants to see his customers go outside and enjoy kicking the balls around in the mud.

“I hate the idea of making balls to sit on the shelf,” said Wheatley, the co-founder of 12 Pentagons.

What started as Wheatley’s COVID quarantine hobby quickly turned into a passion. It’s become a high-end soccer ball business based in St. Louis.

Wheatley launched his company, 12 Pentagons, after the 60-second soccer ball-making videos he made during the pandemic went viral on TikTok. His page, @jonpaulballs, documents him designing and constructing funky soccer balls from scratch. The clips have racked up millions of views and caught the attention of organizations like Adidas and FIFA.

Initially, Wheatley said he had no intention of selling anything, but commenters kept asking him when they could buy his creations, like his black “goth ball” made with spikes and one he made out of 96 Tetris shapes.

His videos have featured a ball made from recycled Nike Air Force 1s. Another was designed to look like a watermelon. And a St. Louis City SC-inspired soccer ball was made from thread soaked in the Mississippi River and had bits of Provel cheese, Ted Drewes frozen custard, grass from the Arch grounds and Pappy’s BBQ sauce stuffed inside.

Though the soccer balls Wheatley creates in his videos are not for sale, he said he will continue to invent new designs and post videos about the process. Many of the ideas and concepts he experiments with come from comments on the videos, he said. Wheatley called the social media site his research and development lab.

“Every video is a pitch for a new ball,” he said. “We can quantify the success of a potential ball with comments and views.”Launching the business

Wheatley founded 12 Pentagons with his wife, Allison Diaz Wheatley, last year with a $75,000 Arch Grant and personal savings. The couple met in 2021.

“I never really thought it would be viable,” said Wheatley, about selling soccer balls, or what he, as a U.K. native, calls footballs. “But it got to the point where I started to wonder what it would take, so I got the ball rolling, no pun intended.”

First, he needed to find a manufacturer that could recreate the quality of his own hand-stitched work at a somewhat reasonable price point, he said. One U.S.-based manufacturer told him it would cost about $1,100 to make such a soccer ball.

In contrast, a mass-produced soccer ball can be found for as low as $13, according to Dick’s Sporting Goods’ website.

“I wanted it to be at least as good as the ones I made in the videos,” said Wheatley, whose background is in product development. Each ball he’s made by hand took one to two weeks to construct, and he wanted that same care to go into the 12 Pentagons products.

Wheatley eventually settled on a manufacturer in Sialkot, Pakistan, which produces a majority of the world’s soccer balls. 12 Pentagons’ first product release was called the Original 92, a ball made out of 92 panels total: 12 pentagons and 80 hexagons.

The balls are crafted out of Italian leather and are hand-sewn together. Wheatley called it the most expensive soccer ball on the market, save some from high-end designers like Louis Vuitton. The Original 92 ball retailed at $275 and sold out in hours.

Despite the price tag, Wheatley said he hopes people go out and kick around the soccer balls. He said the best part of starting 12 Pentagons has been seeing videos and photos of people across the globe playing with his creations.

“I think some people view them as similar to limited edition sneaker drops. They buy them to be collected,” Wheatley said. “That’s not how we plan to market them. They’re a cool thing to play with. Maybe they can occasionally grab it off the shelf and kick it around.”

The millions of views his TikTok videos have attracted gave Diaz Wheatley the confidence to leave her job in sales and marketing at a local business to work at 12 Pentagons full time. The pair, both transplants to St. Louis, plan to remain in the area, thanks to the low cost of living and the city’s rich soccer history.

“It was crazy to see his craft skyrocket,” Diaz Wheatley said.

The pair were pretty confident their product would sell, she said, but, like anything, there are never any guarantees.

“It was an interesting kind of dance because it’s been intangible for so long — seeing the [TikTok] numbers go up,” she said. “But is it something 1,000 people would spend their hard-earned money on?”

On the June day the Original 92 ball went on sale, Wheatley became so nervous he made himself sick. He was at the hospital when Diaz Wheatley called him in tears to share the news: Their inventory of 1,000 balls sold out in under five hours.

Eventually, Wheatley wants 12 Pentagons to regularly release a new soccer ball design every couple of months and establish some that are always in stock and range in price and performance, so there’s something for every consumer.

12 Pentagons plans to release a second round of 1,000 soccer balls in November. These will be more expensive than the Original 92, because the new design has double the number of panels.

“The response just blew us away,” Wheatley said. “It was absolutely crazy.”