82.1 F
San Fernando
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Sports Product Maker Plays On Good Idea

Many entrepreneurs have a great idea but then have trouble building a business that makes that idea profitable. Jack Kasarjian is one of those rare breed of businesspeople who can do both. Kasarjian’s idea: To provide baseball players with better protection from hand injuries on the field, but not at the cost of comfort or flexibility. He did that by tapping into resources offered by other sports and identifying a need that wasn’t being met. Kasarjian started XProTeX Sports Group Worldwide LLC, a Valencia-based company that manufactures baseball and softball gloves that cradle the bones in the hand with an impact-absorbing material called Advanced Impact Composite. The company – which owns five patents – claims that with its gloves, a player hit with a 100 mph ball will only receive the impact of a 40 mph ball. The company, which was formed in 2009, brought the gloves to the retail market in March of last year following 30 months of research development of the product. After receiving Major League Baseball product approval, about 40 major league players wore gloves sponsored by XProTeX last year, and an additional 40 are expected to wear them this year. Gloves have also been purchased for minor league players. The company also sells its products to retailers throughout the United States and in a total of 17 countries. It has sponsored national teams for Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain and other countries, Kasarjian said. Kasarjian, a former real estate builder, was already in the business of providing products to baseball and softball players when he started XProTex. His Las Vegas-based company X Bats, which he started in 1999, manufactures maple and ash wood bats. Today it supplies the bats to more than 300 major league players. Fresh ideas Wanting to branch out and create a new product, Kasarjian consulted with the San Diego-based manufacturers of SixSixOne motocross and dirt bike protective gear products in 2006. “We decided to take that technology and knowledge and the design over to team sports,” Kasarjian said. “Baseball’s a very traditional sport. … So we kind of challenged that mindset and brought in people with fresh ideas.” After securing a group of eight founding members and 15 investors, the company raised about $1.2 million in investment capital and had the protective gear designed and tested. Founding members include those with inside sports expertise, such as former major league player Reggie Smith and former UCLA softball coach and Olympic coach Sue Enquist. The protective material went through 13 generations before the gloves were released on the market. The products were then introduced to the major and minor league players at spring training, a move Kasarjian said is part of his overall marketing plan. “Our primary market is the youth market,” Kasarjian said, adding that the company has youth leagues, travel teams, high school teams and college teams all over the country wearing its gloves. “Major league – that’s the lab at the highest level for the game to establish its credibility for the brand. If the player who’s making $20 million a year is using this to protect themselves, why wouldn’t a kid use it?” For the year 2010, the company had sales of about $1.1 million, Which Kasarjian said would have been higher if he had started selling at the beginning of the year. By starting to sell his line of gloves in March, XProTeX missed one of the sporting goods retail industry’s major buying periods. The company expects to make between $8 million and $10 million sales in 2011. XProTeX has also received approval for its protective material by the National Football League and expects to launch football and lacrosse protective products by the spring. The company is also coming out with its heart guard for youth players and its elbow guard, along with other products for baseball and softball. The goal, Kasarjian said, is to have developed protective gear for 15 sports over the next five years. Retailers say they haven’t seen other gloves that offer the same protection. “It’s unique in the way that they go about protecting that portion of the hand and wrist,” said Darynn Vinson, owner of Batter’s Choice in Virginia. “It’s selling well. … A lot of people come and get it after they’ve been hit the first time, but we’re seeing more and more proactive people trying to use it before you break (the hand or wrist).” Norma Perez, co-owner of baseball and softball sporting goods store Bagger Sports in Valencia, said the gloves are especially popular with parents.

Featured Articles

Related Articles