How DailyLaxDeals.com Works (And Why I Built It)
Let me give you the quick version of who I am and why this site exists, because it’ll make more sense once you know the backstory.
I’m a lacrosse dad. Never played. Never picked up a stick until my kid wanted to start, and once he did, I did what most parents do and dove headfirst into a sport I knew nothing about. That first rec season was genuinely one of the most fun things I’ve ever watched. Neither the kids nor the parents had any idea what was happening out there. Nobody knew the rules. Nobody knew what positions meant. It was chaos and it was great.
Fast forward a few years and my kid got serious about it. Which means I got serious about gear. Which means I started spending a lot of time hunting for deals.
Why I Built This
It was Christmas time. My kid already had all the equipment he needed, but I wanted to find some lacrosse stuff for gifts: stocking stuffers, smaller things, maybe something he’d actually get excited about. So I started clicking around and noticed that a bunch of lacrosse sites had clearance or deals sections. Great. The problem was I had to visit every single one of them, one by one, every few days, to see what was on sale, what was in stock, and what was actually worth buying.
That’s when I found Lax Steals. Fantastic site, great deals, and those prize crates are something else entirely. My kid had some holes in his gloves one year and wanted to try face-off for some reason (he’s a goalie, but sure, why not) so we grabbed a face-off crate. Came with a face-off head and shaft, a pair of Nike Vapor Premier gloves he still talks about, mesh, a stringing kit, the whole thing. For what you’d normally pay for a single complete stick. We just bought another one a few weeks ago, actually. I got myself a dad stick. Long overdue.
Anyway. Lax Steals supposedly had email alerts. I signed up. Never got a single email. Don’t know what happened there.
I’m a software engineer by day, so I did what any reasonable person would do and just wrote a script that checked the site and printed the results to my screen. Nothing fancy. Not a website, just a terminal printout for my own use.
Then I thought, well, ECD has a clearance section too. And STX. And a bunch of others. And once I realized how easy it was to pull that data, I figured I might as well build something real with it. Throw it on a website, keep it simple, and just show deals of the day.
That’s how this started.
How the Site Works Today
The site runs a pipeline every few hours that goes out and checks product catalogs across 25-plus lacrosse retailers. When it finds something new, it pulls it in. When something gets removed, it cleans it out. When prices change, it updates automatically.
Everything that comes in gets run through AI, which categorizes it, scores it based on a set of rules I’ve built up over time, and drops it into a database. Then the site updates. New products show up in their categories, old ones fall off when they’re gone.
Every morning I go through the last 24 to 72 hours of incoming deals and manually pick what goes on the front page. The AI scores give me a starting point, but the final call is mine. I’m looking for things I’d actually buy for my kid or myself. Things with a lot of size or option availability. I’m not going to post a cleat that only comes in size 16. Things that are spread across categories, so you’re not staring at six different shafts in a row.
I’ve also been adding more sideline and off-field gear lately: Amazon items, things you’d actually use at a tournament or practice. Cooling fans, tape, chairs, that kind of stuff. Things I’ve seen at tournaments, come home, and immediately wanted to track down at a discount.
How to Find What You’re Looking For
The front page is curated by me every morning and has the freshest picks. That’s your starting point.
But here’s the thing: overnight I might pull in 50 items from a single retailer that are 30% off, and I’m only going to post a handful of them on the front page. So if you’re looking for something specific, you need to dig into the categories.
Category pages: Head, shaft, gloves, goalie, defense, cleats, apparel, sideline gear. Each category page shows everything in the database that fits, sorted by discount percentage. Biggest discount at the top.
Vendor pages: If you’re loyal to a brand or retailer, go straight to their vendor page. Want to see everything ECD has on clearance right now? That’s the move. Fair warning: SportStop has so much on sale at any given time that their vendor page is a lot to scroll through. Worth it though.
A couple of notes on vendors. There are a few brands I’ve flagged to show all their products, not just discounted ones, because their everyday prices are already that good. Silverfin is one of them: great shafts, great ball bags, solid gear at prices that don’t need a sale sticker. Relax Lacrosse is another: that RC1 head on a complete stick is a genuinely great deal whenever it’s in stock, and I’ll post it on the front page when it is.
Primo Sports is one I love but their catalog pulls in a bunch of team sale stuff I don’t want to show, so they’re front-page only for now until I sort that out.
When You Click a Deal
When you click the deal button, you go directly to the product on that retailer’s site. I don’t sell anything. I don’t touch your order. I’m just pointing you at the deal.
A few of those links are affiliate links: Amazon, Universal Lacrosse, Signature Lacrosse are the main ones. If you buy something through one of those links, I get a small percentage at no cost to you. It’s what keeps the site running.
For Signature Lacrosse, there’s also a coupon code at the top of their vendor page that’ll save you money on top of whatever’s already discounted.
For Kane’s Footwear, the affiliate setup works differently: the link at the top of their vendor page takes you to a landing page, and anything you buy after going through that link helps support the site. It’s an extra click but it helps.
The Newsletter
This is the thing I’m most excited about and the reason you’re probably reading this right now.
The original idea was never really a website. It was an email. I wanted something that would just send me good lacrosse deals without me having to go looking for them. The site came first because I had to build the curation layer before I could build the newsletter.
That layer exists now. So starting soon, I’ll be sending out a weekly deals email (probably Friday mornings) that rounds up the best finds from the past week. Eventually if there’s appetite for it, we go daily. Five or six deals, straight to your inbox, nothing you didn’t ask for.
You’re on the list. First one goes out to everyone. Unsubscribe anytime, no hard feelings.
If you have thoughts on cadence (weekly versus daily, what categories you care most about, what you’d want to see more of), shoot me a note. Seriously. This whole thing started because I was annoyed at having to click around a dozen sites to find a deal. I’d rather know what’s actually useful to you.
In the meantime, check today’s deals at DailyLaxDeals.com and dig into whatever category you’re shopping for. Something good is probably already in there.