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Spellman
"Previously, we had a hard time keeping our internal processes flowing with the time it was taking us to search for assets. Shade unifies our sharing and delivery with where we do all of our work. It's fantastic for our athletes and our editors."
Luke Warner
Head of Marketing @ Spellman Performance
WEBSITE
HEADQUARTERS
San Diego, CA
STRUCTURE
Hybrid, Contractor
INDUSTRY
Athletic Training
SWITCHED FROM
Scoreplay, Dropbox
1
About Spellman Performance
Elite speed training backed by data-driven analytics
Spellman Performance is a sports performance business that trains athletes from youth to elite levels, including NFL Combine preparation. Founded by Les Spellman in San Diego, California, the company has expanded beyond in-person training to create Universal Speed Rating, an analytics platform that tracks and analyzes athlete speed data across over 500,000 data points nationwide. Their dual mission is clear: help athletes perform better through informed training while providing coaches with actionable insights and competitive benchmarks. With a performance facility and a growing network of partner coaches across the country, Spellman Performance prides itself on delivering education-first content that makes complex training principles simple and effective.
Universal Speed Rating (USR) is the core team using Shade day to day. While Spellman Performance is the parent company, USR relies on Shade to manage and quickly locate the content that powers its analytics, education, and distribution workflows.
2
The Challenge
Massive content library with no unified way to organize or share
Universal Speed Rating creates two distinct types of content: educational material for coaches (long-form YouTube podcasts, webinars, and digestible social clips) and on-field training footage of athletes and coaches in action. Over the years, this has resulted in tens of thousands of videos, images, and raw files collected from videographers, training sessions, and partnerships. The sheer volume made organization and retrieval a constant challenge.
Prior to Shade, the USR team kept content primarily in a single platform. The challenge wasn’t that assets were scattered—it was that, at their scale, it was difficult to consistently organize, sift through, and quickly find specific materials when they were needed.
Without a centralized, intelligent search layer and stronger organization, the team spent excessive time manually cataloging and hunting down assets—slowing down content production and creating friction for the internal team.
Learn why top agencies, global brands, and high-growth enterprises use Shade.
3
Introduction to Shade
Cost-effective consolidation with AI search that actually works
The decision to switch to Shade came down to three factors: cost, AI-powered search, and better organization. "To be completely frank, Shade was cheaper than the tool we were using, which was a draw," Luke Warner, Head of Marketing, explained. But the cost savings were just the beginning. The USR team saw significant value in Shade's AI features, which would allow their editor to sift through massive amounts of content far more efficiently than before.
Equally important was Shade's flexible folder structure and shareable link system. For a team that frequently collaborates with contractors, partners, and clients, having an easy way to organize content and create custom shareable links became essential. Shade offered a single platform where raw footage, edited videos, and polished deliverables could live together, accessible on demand and ready to be posted to YouTube or social platforms without additional transfers.
4
The New Workflow
From raw upload to social delivery, all in one system
With Shade, the USR team's content workflow has been completely streamlined. Raw footage from training days gets uploaded directly into the platform, where it's automatically tagged and cataloged. Their editor pulls from this living archive to create educational content, social clips, and client deliverables without jumping between systems. When content is ready to ship, Shade's shareable links make it simple to send polished assets to customers, partners, and stakeholders.
The mounted drive feature has been particularly valuable for their editors, enabling seamless local editing workflows while keeping everything synced to the cloud. And because all content lives in one searchable system, the team can now quickly locate footage of specific athletes, repurpose high-performing clips, and respond to timely opportunities far faster than before. Every asset created becomes an organized, evergreen resource that's instantly retrievable.
5
Present Outcome
Faster content discovery with simplified collaboration
Since adopting Shade, the USR team has transformed how they manage and distribute content. The AI-powered search and tagging system has dramatically reduced the time spent hunting for specific footage, allowing the team to respond quickly to content opportunities and repurpose valuable material from their massive archive. Centralizing everything in one platform has eliminated the need to juggle multiple tools for storage, sharing, and delivery.
Collaboration with contractors and external stakeholders has become effortless, with shareable links replacing cumbersome file transfers. The result is a leaner, faster content operation that supports both their in-house creative team and their growing network of coaches and partners nationwide. For a company built on data-driven performance, Shade has become the infrastructure that keeps their content engine running smoothly.
