Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth | How I Built This with Guy Raz

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2012 we were having a big coaches party and I remember our engineer saying, hey, the NCAA just told me that they're going to de -certify our bats.

Hmm. They tested some bats and they said the bats in the field were testing higher than the limit.

That it was bouncing back too hard, which meant that it would give a player an unfair advantage.

That's correct. And I literally couldn't speak.

All of our bats in the market, we're going to have to recall and we have the hottest bat right now in the market.

And I'm I remember walking back to my hotel thinking the company was done.

Wow. And it was a it was a multi -million dollar hit for a company that didn't have money.

Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

I'm Guy Roz and on the show today, how a bad shoulder injury turned a ball player into a businessman who built Marucci Sports into one of the biggest brands on the baseball field.

Since 1884, a single brand, Louisville Slugger, has been virtually synonymous with one sport, baseball.

The company has been producing the official bat of Major League Baseball since as long as anyone can remember.

It's pretty fair to say that Louisville Slugger is an iconic American brand like Levi's or Coca -Cola or Ford.

And yet in 2025, the brand will no longer be the official bat of Major League Baseball.

That designation will go to an upstart brand called Marucci and its sister company, Victus.

So how did Marucci, a brand founded 20 years ago in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, come to knock Louisville Slugger off its perch?

Well, this is the story of a very risky business venture, the story of a couple of injured professional baseball players who were looking for a career after baseball spit them out.

Now, to step back a bit further, most professional athletes don't make enough money to live off for the rest of their lives.

You only hear about the guys who signed multi -million dollar deals.

The average length of a career in Major League Baseball is less than three years.

The median salary is around a million and a half dollars a year.

That's a lot of cash, but after taxes, after paying your agent and lawyer, most guys are lucky if they have enough left to buy a house once their career is over.

So it means a lot of former players get jobs on coaching staffs at universities or sometimes in professional leagues.

This was probably Kurt Ainsworth's path.

Kurt was initially a stud that is actually a term in baseball, a stud, a guy who was a great player.

Kurt was drafted in the first round by the San Francisco Giants in 1999.

And he made his Major League debut in 2001, but like a lot of pitchers, Kurt was prone to injury.

When you throw a ball at 90 miles per hour over and over and over again, you are likely to damage your arm, and after three years of injuries, surgeries, rehab, and attempts to try and revive his career, Kurt was basically out of a job.

But by chance, he got reconnected with one of his old training coaches at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, a guy by the name of Jack Marucci.

And Jack, well, he had a hobby.

He loved to carve his own wooden baseball bats.

And even though Kurt Ainsworth wasn't a particularly strong hitter, remember he was a pitcher.

He saw a lot of potential in those Marucci bats, and eventually, he convinced Jack Marucci to turn his hobby into a business and then a partnership.

For more than a decade after, Kurt and his third partner, Joe Lawrence, struggled.

They struggled because, well, the wooden baseball bat market is pretty small, and it's highly regulated by baseball leagues across the country.

At times, it wasn't clear that Marucci would survive at all.

But Kurt and Joe had an advantage over their big competitors in baseball.

They were players who knew what other players wanted in a baseball bat.

Consistency in quality, flexibility, and hardness.

Today, Marucci Sports is a much, much bigger business, and now a major player in baseball.

How they got there?

Well, that's our story for today.

Kurt Ainsworth was born and raised in Baton Rouge.

His dad worked for Dow Chemical, and his mom stayed at home to raise the family.

Growing up, Kurt naturally played Little League, and he remembers being one of these smaller kids on the team.

I remember in Little League, we had Will Clark came and spoke to our Little League one year, and he said, one of you in the crowd is going to play in the major leagues.

Oh wow. And Will Clark was on the Giants, I believe.

He was a... He was.

He was, and he's from New Orleans, Louisiana, so I always woke up every morning, checked the box court to see how Will Clark did.

He was always my hero as a kid, and I literally felt he was talking to me that day.

Every paper I think I did for a school paper as a kid, what do you want to be when you grow up?

I always wanted to be a major league baseball player.

And all the teachers would kind of laugh at me and say, nobody really gets to do that.

And again, I was small on my team.

It's really hard, but I always believed I could do it.

Yeah, yeah, and obviously we're going to get there.

And you grew into a really serious ball player.

I think by the time you were a senior in high school, you were pitching...

How fast were you pitching at the time?

I think my mechanics were a little messed up, but I was probably somewhere in the, I would say 82 to 87 or 88 range, so I was okay for a high school player.

Yeah, and we should mention that, like, today, if you're a player in college and you're hitting...

You're reaching in the upper 90s, even if your pitches are not accurate, there's a good chance that you will be drafted into the majors.

Because once you're over 97, 98, into the hundreds, right, it's next level.

Yeah, I think when I was coming out, when you were hitting 90, you were probably a top prospect.

Obviously the speeds have changed along the way, and now it seems like you turn on the TV and most guys are throwing 95 to 100.

It really is amazing to see these guys throw.

Yeah, it's totally crazy.

I know for college, you wound up playing for LSU, your local university, Louisiana State.

Which one of those schools that I just...

It is very good at baseball.

I think some of the greatest players, like Alex Bregman, the pitcher Aaron Nolah, DJ LeMayhew, I mean, lots of amazing, incredible roster of players who went through that program.

But from what I understand, like, in your case, you weren't actually recruited by LSU, right?

Like, you were a walk -on and you started training with the team your freshman year, right?

Yeah. So during that year, I trained through...

I felt okay and then had some elbow injuries and then went to summer ball, and in my first game in summer ball, I ended up throwing a complete game no -hitter, but blew out my elbow.

Wait. In that game, you threw a no -hitter, which is...

And you blew out your elbow.

Were you throwing that ball in severe pain?

Extraordinary pain.

And I had some teammates on the team, they're like, man, come on, you got to suck it up.

You got to go. You're throwing well, we need you to pitch for LSU next year.

So I was like, all right, I can do this.

And so I pitched the whole game and then my elbow just blew up and it was...

Wow. So you were just damaging it more and more and more over the course of those three hours.

But then eventually, I think you got surgery to fix that injury and it was, I guess, a torn ligament in your elbow.

That's right. And then you come back to the team in 1999, you have this incredible season, like 157 strikeouts and 130 innings.

You had like 13 -6 record for...

I mean, it's awesome.

You start to get scouts coming to look at you play, right?

Yeah, it was a great season.

It was really a whirlwind season and it just seemed like I was getting better each week.

And my girlfriend and I got engaged going into that season, my wife now, which was kind of crazy going into that last year at LSU.

And then throughout that season, it was kind of a whirlwind all the way through the regionals and super regionals until the draft.

And I think not that long after the season ended, you guys won a title, a regional title, you were drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the first round.

That's correct. You know, when the Giants came up and selected me with the 24th pick, it was a special moment that I'll always remember for sure.

I can't imagine. Yeah.

I mean, it must have been incredible.

It was. So you get drafted.

Now, this is the thing about baseball is and it's different.

It's even different back then it is now you get drafted, you get a signing bonus.

So they give you some money.

And then for the most part, they send you to the minor leagues to really season you before they're ready to bring you in if they ever do.

So first of all, was it significant money or was it I mean, what did you make a bunch of money on that side by by signing with the Giants?

Yeah. That was it was it was it was nice, right?

It was a good one point three million dollar start at 20 years old.

Wow. So that's amazing.

So you get this opportunity.

And you go and we'll talk about about money and sports in a moment because I think a lot of people make the assumption that, oh, you're a professional athlete, you're set for life, but a lot of but if you think about it, some guys will make three, four million dollars over the course of their career,

which is short. And then they they blow it, they blow the cash by house by car, pay taxes, help their friends and their broke.

So which is a very common story.

You go to play for the Giants and I think roughly two years after you were drafted.

You make your debut your major league debut for the San Francisco Giants, which is again, that's really fast.

I mean, you didn't you were not in the minor leagues for very long.

No, I wasn't. I moved up very fast.

I had some really good chances, some opportunities early, you know, I put so much pressure on myself, I'm to be honest with you, I didn't really enjoy it along the way.

And I mean, I think that first season you pitched like five or six games, right?

Yeah, I was just in the bullpen that first year in September.

And then you got a good season 2002.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you got 11 starts, I mean, you're doing well.

And then, like, right when the sea like the right when it's summertime, the peak of baseball early summer, you get injured your shoulder.

Yeah, this time was different.

Yeah. Then they finally figured out after my 11 start that I had a broken shoulder blade.

And it was tough. And but I was still pitching well, so they were throwing me out there.

And I didn't want to come off the mound.

You know, I wanted to keep going.

And then, of course, as I'm rehabbing, I get traded to the Orioles that year.

Right. And so you are sent to the Orioles and that's business.

That's that's baseball.

Like one day you're wearing one uniform and the next day you are halfway across the country wearing another uniform.

Yeah. And so Dave Raguetti was our pitching coach time comes and gets me out of the dugout.

And we walk up this long tunnel at Wrigley Field and he said he's, you know, he and I had a great relationship.

He said you've been traded to Baltimore.

And basically I was like, can I go tell my teammates by he said, no, you got to go change.

Take your jersey off.

There's a car waiting for you.

And you're flying to Baltimore.

Wow, you can't even say goodbye to your teammates.

So that one that one hurt.

Wow. It's like clear out your don't even clear out your desk with the security will escort you from the premises.

It's so crazy. Yeah.

Yeah. Why why is it like that?

Why? Why don't they say because I've heard this before.

Why aren't they like, yeah, go say goodbye to the guys and go like, you know, having a last drink.

Why don't they do that?

It could be different now.

And that was just kind of back then.

And the Wrigley Field tunnels.

I mean, I think we walked a half a mile to get to our locker room at this point.

I mean, you were in Chicago when that happened.

Yeah, we were in Chicago on a road trip.

Then I was like, well, I'm going to show them.

I'm gonna go to Baltimore, really be the pitcher that they didn't realize they had.

Wow. All right. So you get to Baltimore and but injured, you're not going to play.

So you've got to, you're on the team, but you got to rehab.

And I guess you decided to or you had an opportunity to go back to Louisiana for some time during that season.

Yeah, it was in 2004.

So I reached out to the Orioles and said, would you let me go home to Baton Rouge?

You know, Jack Marucci is the head trainer at LSU.

Would you let me go home and Jack will write my reports and do my rehab?

And the Orioles actually said, yes.

I was like, whoa. So I had to cold call Jack Marucci and say, Jack, you probably don't know who I am.

You're the football trainer.

I played baseball. No, she goes, I know who you are.

I said, would you do my rehab?

And he said, of course, come on to Baton Rouge.

And that is how our relationship with Jack Marucci started.

Right. So I mean, he's a really cutting edge trainer and always has been.

So I was like, Hey, I want to go back and do my rehab there.

And when you were back in Louisiana, you know, first of all, you're the guy who made the major.

So, so people are like, dude, what are you doing here?

Right? You would see people and, and it would probably was probably kind of, you had to explain what was going on.

And, and, and I don't know, probably probably wasn't a great time.

Yeah. It's tough. You know, being injured is not fun.

You feel like you're not really part of the team sometimes when you're in there and you're watching your other guys go through everything and you're there every day and your rehab, and it's just not the same.

It's just not. Yeah.

It was super frustrating to me because I worked so hard and I think that's the one thing that bothered me.

The harder I worked in baseball, the more injuries I had.

You can only throw so much.

You can only run and lift so much.

And that was always, it really hurt me, you know, psychologically a lot on just couldn't stay healthy.

Yeah. All right. So you're back in Baton Rouge and there's another guy that another player, former baseball player named Joe Lawrence, that is also help me understand the story.

He was a, he was also a form.

He was a former major league player who then left baseball and went back to college and was playing college football as a 27 year old freshman on the LSU team.

And he got injured his freshman year and was also in this rehab program that you were in with, with Jack Marucci.

Yeah. What a crazy story.

Yeah. He's just an incredible athlete.

Obviously it was Mr.

Football or Mr. Baseball in Louisiana as well, when he was coming out of high school, the same year as I did in 1996, but you knew who he was.

Oh yeah. And his, his best friend at the time was my roommate at LSU.

So Joe and I developed a relationship when I was playing at LSU.

So when I had a chance to come back, he's rehabbing his knee.

I'm rehabbing my shoulder and Jack's our trainer.

I mean, here's where I think your story really takes off because Jack Marucci, who, who is doing your rehab, he is like kind of overseeing it.

He also happens to have this hobby, which is making his own wooden baseball bats, right?

Yeah. He was always tinkering with wood.

Um, you know, he tried to would make bats for his son in the neighborhood.

His son's name was Gino in town and he had called Louisville Slugger one day to make a youth bat and they wouldn't do it.

And so Jack said, well, I'm from Pennsylvania.

I know I took wood shopping in high school.

I'm gonna make a wood bat for my son.

And he did. And he made a wood bat for his son.

And then he started making other bats at night and he would bring him into the locker room for Joe to look at it.

Cause he was a hitter.

I was a pitcher and Joe and I love baseball.

So we'd like to look at the bats and talk about bats.

And that's really where all these conversations started.

All right. So Jack Marucci trainer, but just as a fun kind of like hobby would make wooden baseball bats and I guess, as you say, it started out, he wanted to make it for his son, who was a little league player.

And anyone knows about little league, it's certainly at that time, very unusual for little league player to use a wooden bat to use aluminum bats in little league.

You know, he, he studied the industry and started making some pretty good bats.

And it just how the stars aligned as, you know, his house is two, two streets away from mine at the time of Baton Rouge.

And so Jack was just kind of whittling in his backyard.

He had a waffle ball field in his backyard for kids to go play.

And really when Joe and I started seeing some of these bats, we're like, man, your knees not rehabbing very well.

It's not coming back.

My shoulder is not coming back very well.

Let's let's think about what are we going to do now that our careers are, are coming to an end, like we're going to keep trying to play, but if they come to an end, what are we going to do?

So, all right. Jack Marucci is not, does not have a business.

He is just for fun making baseball bats, but because he's the trainer, LSU also has access to a lot of potentially a lot of pros.

Yeah, correct. Yeah.

And Jack has relationships from his days at Florida state.

He was a trainer there first, and Eduardo Perez was a player at Florida state.

And so he decided to make a bat for Eduardo Perez just for fun.

He was on the Orioles.

The Reds, Reds at the time.

And so he literally went there to bring him a bat, just thinking he would take some batting practice with it.

And next thing you know, Eduardo Perez used it in the game and a major league.

And it was just a no name, but it was just a bat that was.

Yeah. He had a logo on it.

He did. Okay. Yeah.

He put a Marucci logo on it.

So he had kind of created this on his own computer in his backyard, put some, you know, a sticker on it, Marucci bat company.

Uh, so it was amazing.

He had Eduardo use it.

Uh, and then believe it or not, Barry Larkin used it Hall of Famer and got a hit.

Wow. And then Mike Cameron used it and hit a home run.

But okay, let's, let's back up for a sec.

What was so special about his bats?

I mean, they're wooden bats.

They're, there are other companies that made and make wooden bats.

So what made those bats good?

I mean, why did you think they were?

Yeah. What made them better in your view?

Yeah, I don't think they were at that time.

I'm going to be honest with you.

Um, I think we saw an opportunity.

We saw that, uh, the other competitors in the space were sending out, you know, 12 bats to a player when they order a dozen players and only three or four of them would be good enough to use in a game.

Only three or four out of the dozen bats.

Why is that? Yeah. So when you go, it was just commonplace to use in a dozen bats and a player would go through them and they would do their own grading scale and they'd say, man, these three or four are perfect.

I'm going to save these for game.

I'm going to use these three or four for batting practice and the rest.

I'm just going to sign and give away.

And then you look player by player.

I was a pitcher in the National League.

So my wood wasn't as good as other people's wood.

And I'm sitting there like, man, they're walking guys to get to me.

I should have the best bats.

I'm in the major leagues.

Why am I not getting good wood?

You know, just looking at wood, whether it's the grains, whether there's knots in the wood, the weight, uh, we would grade our bats and, and again, pitchers bats were never high quality.

And so we actually got together and said, we're going to start a bat company where every player in the major leagues get the best wood.

You know, it's just interesting because a wooden bat is.

I mean, first of all, most people who play baseball, they don't swing them.

They, if you play youth baseball, you've only used an aluminum bat and a wooden bat just feels so different.

It's like, there's a weight to it.

Right. And so it's, it really is very specific to the player, right?

Like different players connect with a bat.

And, and, and even if it's the same brand on it, different bats in different ways.

Yeah. We, we'd like to say, wood bats, the best training tool out there.

If you can learn how to hit with a wooden bat and find a sweet spot on that, when you pick up your aluminum or your composite bat, you're going to be a better hitter.

So, all right, when you, you go to Jack Marucci, you and Joe go to him and you say, Hey, we want to turn this bat thing you're doing into a business.

And what was his initial reaction?

Uh, no, we can't do that.

There's no money in this.

Uh, you know, we're not going to make any money doing this.

Uh, this is just, you know, kind of his hobby and, and Joe and I really said, you know, Hey, we want to do this.

Uh, we, we want to push this along.

So at the time, who were the, I mean, what companies were making bats as a, there's a Louisville slugger.

I, I mean, I remember Easton as a kid and like there's already established brands doing this, right?

Is that, was that the case?

Of course. Yeah, Louisville slugger.

I mean, that was the crown jewel in the space, uh, pretty much owned the market.

Yeah. So Jack was initially skeptical saying, this is not really where I want to put my time and effort, but why did he agree to then when you guys, you and Joe were like, let's do this.

What got him to agree to it?

Yeah. I mean, rightfully so.

He should have been skeptical.

Right? The wood bat market at that time was small.

It was tough and it did take us a long time to do it.

But we told him that, Hey, we're committed to this.

We're going to build a shed in my backyard.

We're going to put in the equipment.

Joe and I are going to work this and sell it during the day.

And we can do something with it.

So Joe and I were willing to go sign our houses.

We were willing to go mortgage our houses on all the equipment we brought into our house and he, he finally did agree to it and trusted us.

We built a great relationship.

And people probably assume even when you're back in Louisiana doing rehab, that you got all this cash cause you are the majors, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And look, I, we had some money from the signing bonus for sure, but it was like, at some point you're just going to continue to dip through that, the savings.

Right. So, you know, day -to -day money coming in was, was not matching what my spend was going out.

All right. This September 2004, you guys start the Marucci back company.

And how did you again, you're a very smart guy, good student in, in high school, but you did not know anything about business at this point, right?

Um, you didn't come from a family of entrepreneurs.

So, which is, you know, very common.

And so what did you, how did you, first of all, how did you guys split this business up?

Yeah. So we just split it up in thirds to begin with.

Makes sense. Yep. And our lawyer left that meeting saying, man, I hope my friends didn't just lose all their money in a bat company.

Right. So it didn't make sense at the time.

And there was no playbook for what we wanted to do.

And, you know, at that time we really didn't even know where we were going to go with it.

Is it just going to be major league alone?

Are we going to run camps, clinics, teams?

Um, but I tell you what we did commit to is making the best bats in the world and getting, learning everything about the wood business.

Okay. This is the fall of 2004.

You're still rehabilitating, hoping to come back for the 2005 baseball season, right?

That's still, you're with the Orioles.

Still in the Orioles at that time.

Um, and went back into spring training that next year, and you know, kind of Joe held down the business in Baton Rouge while I was there.

And we had a lot of really good players on the Orioles that year and I was bringing in bats.

So I have to assume that, that Jack who knew how to make the bats, was the guy who had to make the bats or, or, or was he teaching you guys how to like use, you know, table saws and, and, and laving machines and stuff?

Or did you just naturally have that ability?

Like how, how, how was that working?

Well, first things first, you know, there was no real playbook to do it.

So when we ordered the equipment, it all showed up at my house.

I had built a shed in the backyard.

Wow. We had a big CNC lathe.

We had engraving machines.

We had sanding machines.

I mean, we went all out on equipment.

How much money do you think it costs to get all this equipment in your, to buy it all?

We were several hundred thousand dollars deep in equipment.

To make baseball bats.

Yeah. Our neighbors thought we were kind of crazy, but they would come over and watch.

And what was crazy is that, you know, Jack after he'd be at football all day, then Jack would come over at night and cut bats late into the night on the lathe.

And then Joe and I, during the day, we would sand bats, stain bats, paint bats, engrave them, and ship them off to customers.

We were kind of the sales operations.

We actually made all the bats during the day and Jack would cut it night.

Wow. How long would it take to make one bat?

Back then, I think it was probably a couple of minutes to cut it, but then you got to, you know, a couple of minutes to sand it, then you got to stain it, let it dry, you know, then the engrave it.

So I mean, it took quite a bit of time.

We weren't doing very many bats a day.

I can tell you back then.

I've read that Pete, that people have used cow femurs, the femur of a cow to smooth a bat surface.

Can you explain why you'd need a cow femur?

It's just like a giant piece of bone, by the way.

Yeah. We used to bone every bat and we used to be in our logo until, you know, we had to take it off because it was an extra logo.

They said, MLB, we used to say bone rubbed on our bats.

We used to actually use a cow femur and compress the grains of the bat to make it a harder bat.

So if you didn't compress it, you could have seam marks in your bat.

And to us, that meant softer.

So we were compressing every bat with a cow femur.

Wow. And a cow femur is better than like a steel rod?

Uh, no, I think it was probably, it was kind of bringing back the old school days.

I gotcha. All right.

As we've gone on, we've used other products that are not cow femurs.

We started with a cow femur.

I got it. It's a better story than using like, you know, modern technology.

Um, all right. So, so you guys are doing this through the winter and then you go back for spring training, back to, you're going to go to Florida to go back and work out with the guys at the Orioles, hoping to, to obviously make the roster, right?

Yeah. And, um, you, you come with a bunch of bats with the intention of handing them out to your, to your teammates.

Yeah. It was, uh, you know, basically you would take a model they liked, you would copy it, make it in our wood, our finish, send it back to them.

And the players really started liking the bats.

So, all right. How much was a bat like a hundred bucks?

Back then it was probably more like $65.

It should have been a lot more than that with the amount of time and effort we put in, but I think they were like $65 when we started.

And, and at that time, this is 2005 now spring training 2005.

Again, like you could probably still get away with it and not have to get like a cause the M NFL, MLB, they're so obsessive over anybody being involved in those leaks without approval or paying licensing fees or whatever.

So you could kind of get away with it at that time.

Like players could just use it in spring training.

We've got license that year.

You got a license in the MLB.

Okay. So once you got the approval, then, then it was okay to use it in major league baseball.

And, and in terms of like weight, for example, cause you said that you would, you were on the Orioles, right?

And, uh, you'd ask players, Hey, you want to try this bat?

You would take their bats that they liked and then send them back.

And you would try to match the weight and everything.

But there has to be like a range, right?

Like a bat can't be heavier than this and lighter than this, right?

Yeah. There's a lot of regulations and it's changed over the year with MLB.

And, you know, we adapt to those changes, but, you know, certain players want certain things, uh, and you've got to work with them to give them what they want.

And, you know, of course over the years, it's, we're a little bit more sophisticated than we were back then, but the biggest thing for us is consistency.

Makes sense. Yep. And it's just the three of us.

We weighed our bats down to the 10th of an ounce, which we still do to this day.

And we wanted to be perfect.

So when a player would order 12 bats from us, this is where it gets crazy is that we would send two.

We'd send four, we'd send three and the clubhouse guys would call us and be like, this is why we don't order from small bat companies.

We ordered 12. You sent us two or three bats.

And we're like, well, hold on.

We could send you 12, but all we had good wood for was two or three.

And the other, you know, the phone would go silent and they go, what?

Yeah, we could send you 12, but.

You know, we only had that good wood.

So I think players realized when they got our bats at the beginning, every bat was perfect.

You, given that your bats were better, I have to assume that you were throwing away a lot of wood.

Like you would get wood in and it would just not be good enough.

So you just had to eat it.

You couldn't use it.

Yeah. That's another lesson we learned early.

Um, I think we start looking at our numbers.

It's less than 10 % of our wood, more like 7 % probably goes to a pro player.

Well, what do you do with the other 93 % and in those days we didn't have an outlet.

We didn't have any retail bats.

We didn't have a whole lot out there.

So our woods started building up and adding up and you start looking at each piece of wood, let's just call it a $20 bill.

There was a lot of $20 bills laying around and it made for some uncomfortable conversations when you would miss cut a bat or miss sand a bat or miss print a bat, you're like, Ooh, you just wasted a really good piece of wood.

So what would you do with the wood that you're not going to, cause if it had to be perfect for the professional players, you just like turn to sawdust.

Or would you do that?

No, we would do a lot of souvenir bats.

We did a lot of graduation bats, birth bats, uh, high school, senior bats.

And then the truth of it is, is that, you know, Joe and I would, would take off with one of our other employees, our first employee who's still here to this day, you know, Brett Laxden, he pitched in the big leagues as well.

We would load up a trailer of all of our extra cut bats and we would drive to Alabama to men's senior baseball league tournament.

This is 40 year old and older men up to like 65.

And we would sell every bat at the tournament and come back with an empty trailer.

And that kind of kept, kept our business going.

All right. So also from what I gather pretty soon after you guys started this business, you shifted from Ashwood to Maplewood.

Why does that matter?

Why is Maple better than Ash?

Yeah, that was a huge move for us.

That was kind of one of the early ways the stars aligned for us in the industry changed.

Uh, you know, Barry Bonds made Maple popular.

He came in and started hitting with Maple and he was hitting all his home runs and then Maple became more and more popular.

And people looked into it and Maple is just a harder wood.

Uh, and if you really, you know, show people a player comes in, you could take a nail with a hammer and drive it right into an Ash bat, you can take that same nail and try to put it in a Maple bat.

It's going to bend the nail and you show a hitter that and they're like, why wouldn't you use a harder bat?

And so players started going to Maple really quickly, uh, over Ash.

And then the Emerald Ash beetle, the Ash borer beetle came in and kind of wiped out most of the Ash in the, in the United States.

So then it really forced everybody into Maple.

And we had a really big head start on the Maple side.

So that allowed us to gain market share pretty quickly.

Okay. Let's go back to spring training.

2005 with the Orioles.

You guys get the MLB to, uh, get licensed by the MLB.

So they're, they're legal.

You are handing them out to players.

Any, by the way, any, um, cause I would think that if you get in the hands of a star player, that's a bigger deal.

Were you able to get into the hands of any players who were particularly visible?

Yeah, sure. With some hall of famers on that team and some superstars, right?

I mean, well, Sammy Sosa, Raphael, Paul Mero, Brian Roberts, but yeah, to have those guys use it and validate the product, I think that is when we knew we were onto something.

Were you, I mean, at that time, did you have to pay players to agree to just test out your batch or was it kind of casual, like, yeah, no problem.

Like, cause today it's a completely different world.

Everybody's an influencer, right?

Everybody's like, where's my cut?

I'm not going to use your product until I get a, like it's totally different world, uh, for the worst, I think.

But back then, could you just been like, Hey, Rafael, palmer, palmero, like use my bat and he'd be like, sure.

Yeah, it was even better than that for us.

You know, we've never paid a player to swing a bat and a lot of that was because we just couldn't afford to pay players.

I'm going to be honest with you, but, but, but again, we were very fortunate that the major league teams were actually buying the bats.

So I would go to the players and say, Hey, do you want to try these?

Well, have the clubhouse guy order them.

And they were actually buying the bats.

Okay. So all they had to do is go to the clubhouse guy, like their quartermaster and say, Hey, I like this bat.

Can you order a few of these?

That's, that's correct.

And that's, you know, just kind of passed around from there and really helped us grow that brand.

And by the way, I should, we should, I should have asked you this.

You called it Marucci bat company.

Cause it was, cause Jack was making them.

Um, and that was the only reason you just thought it sounded cool.

Yeah. It sounded better than Ainsworth bat company or Lawrence bat company.

It has that designer feel to it.

And I think that was probably our first really good decision we made is just keeping it as Marucci bat company.

It just has that Italian high, high end feel to it.

Prada Gucci Ferrari Marucci.

Yeah. And I think Joe and I were kind of at that point in time, we were thinking you could put it on anything and it would kind of add value, right?

We weren't thinking just wood bats.

Joe and I weren't at that time.

We had always been thinking outside of wood of where could this take us down the road.

All right. You start spring training and once again, season ends early.

You re aggravate that injury that you had in your shoulder.

So again, that season's done.

I'm curious, does your salary get affected when you, when you can't play or it's just the contract, they got to pay you no matter what it's pay or play.

Yeah, it depends on where you are.

So if you're in the major, if you're in the major leagues, you'll get your major league pay.

If you're in the minor leagues, you get your minor league pay.

And I had already been sent down that year.

I think at that point to not get the full major league pay.

So, and I, and I had two kids at that point when I got home.

So, yeah, it was two kids, not having the salary, coming home, working for a company for free.

It was, it was definitely challenging times.

When we come back in just a moment, Kirk and his partners branch out into aluminum bats, a decision that makes all the sense in the world until it doesn't.

Stay with us. I'm Guy Roz and you're listening to How I Built This.

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Hey, welcome back to How I Built This, I'm Guy Roz.

So it's 2005 and with his partners, Kurt Ainsworth is growing Marucci bats and hoping he can get back to pitching with the Orioles despite a bad shoulder injury.

But that year, the team lets him go.

Yeah, I mean, when the season ended, I was basically released.

You know, I was I was no longer under a contract.

No team control. So I was a free agent.

And so I was I had no pay coming in.

And I was trying out for teams and, you know, started working out for teams that, you know, that really that off season, November, December throw in and then hopefully to get signed to go to spring training one more time to give it a run.

So meantime, you guys are focused on the bats on selling the bats.

And probably even if you're selling, I don't know, a thousand bats, right?

I'm just doing the math.

I mean, it's not a lot of money coming in.

If you're selling them for 65 to 80 dollars, you're not doing serious revenue at this point.

No, we weren't doing it.

And especially if you have three partners and you also have employees there every day.

So we were paying to do what?

So we're we're paying.

We're paying guys to help us sand bats, paint bats, you know, engrave bats, ship bats at that time.

You know, we need we had help.

So we were paying them and not ourselves.

So anything we were making was going right back into the business to pay the employees and to buy more inventory because wood was expensive.

So you're a free agent and you're trying out for a bunch of teams and you get signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Yes. My team growing up in Los Angeles, 2006, you go to you get signed.

You go spring training.

And and there once again, you're able to do what you did with the Orioles.

You were able to bring bats and put them in the hands of some players.

And did you have some success there again?

We did. And this was an upgraded bat.

Our finishes got better that year.

You know, Jose Cruz Jr.

And some of the other players started really gravitating toward the bats and really started buying into the company.

Yeah. And now I'm in the National League, so I was hitting.

So I really had better bats than our hitters.

And it became it was pretty funny that you see hitters go up and take my bats to go out into the games.

But, you know, I just, my first bullpen in spring training was great.

And I just couldn't recover after that first bullpen, no matter how good a shape I was in, it was super frustrating to me because I worked so hard.

I mean, I was really throwing well.

And then I just had that damage in my shoulder and I knew it was coming.

And so, you know, I threw one game in a field and my wife was there.

My kids were there.

My family was there actually at this game.

And I walked over to him.

I said, I'm glad you all are here.

And like, what do you mean?

I said, well, that was the last time you'll ever see me throw.

And they're like, whoa, I can't take anymore.

So I went and told the trainers, I said, look, I can't go anymore.

I gotta have, I gotta go see a doctor.

So they flew me to Los Angeles and they did MRIs again.

And the doctor said, man, your, the labrum rotator cuff was all completely torn.

And it was laying down perfectly on the MRI.

So we couldn't tell how bad it was because I can't believe you were throwing a baseball and I was like, well, and one thing, it made me feel good that I knew something was really wrong, but in the other thing is I knew my career was over that day.

So even before spring training ends, you're done 2006.

Yeah, super early that year, came home in a sling.

And next thing you know, I'm driving my wife to the hospital and we deliver our baby in the car on the way to the hospital, wobbed my arms in a sling.

So I mean, we've had some crazy things happen along the way.

Wait, how was that baby delivered?

Uh, in the front seat of our Tahoe.

And I just another just super blessed that I'm pulling through a parking lot.

We're in traffic and I see an ambulance and I get out of my car, my arm in a sling, run over, beat on the ambulance, ambulance drives around and helps deliver the baby in the front seat of our car on the way to the hospital.

Oh my God. She's a trooper.

All right. So, so you're done.

Yeah. You're like 28, you're done with baseball.

And, um, did it feel cathartic?

Did it feel like, okay, now I'm just going to get this dream up and now focus, or did it feel where you sat about it?

I was sad probably for a minute that day when the doctor told me how bad the surgery was, and then it was almost relieved.

I was tired of rehabbing injuries.

And it was one of those things where I worked hard and I knew I worked hard.

And the harder I worked in baseball, the more injuries I had.

And I knew I could put that attention to something else.

And the harder I worked at Marucci, I could see success and it really just changed my focus and said, we're going all in on this thing and let's go do it.

All right. So you, you're at a baseball and you've got no salary.

You're, you have no salary.

You've got three children and you've put all of your money into the, into the equipment for this baseball business, which is far from profitable.

Right. So what are you going to do to make money?

Well, you know, my wife kind of gave me that hard discussion of like, Hey, what are you going to do?

You know, baseball's over.

What are you going to do?

You guys need to start making some money because we weren't taking anything out of Marucci, couldn't afford to.

So, uh, Joe and I got together and we started another business in Baton Rouge called the big leagues of Baton Rouge.

The big leagues of Baton Rouge.

Correct. And it was a baseball batting cages and training facility.

And we, we opened that in 2000 in the summer really of 2006.

And we put together a staff there of, of a lot of ex major league players that were in the area, as you said, Baton Rouge has a lot of talent and we had a lot of players in there giving lessons.

This makes sense, right?

Cause you guys had expertise.

You start a, a baseball training facility to help any professional or college player, maybe even high school players.

High school and youth mainly.

So Joe and I would show up at six 30 in the morning and work for Marucci from 6 30 to two 30, we would kind of change into our PE uniforms.

We called it and then we would go do lessons till 9 PM Monday through Friday.

And then lessons on Sunday, 12 to six.

And we were booked out for several months at a time.

We were doing 200 and I think 220 private lessons each a month.

Wow. So you were basically working like 12, 15 hour days?

Yeah, it was, it was a lot.

And I, you know, I had three young kids at the time and, uh, you know, we did that for 18 months and I feel like I was raising other people's kids.

You know, my kids were coming up there and they loved it.

They were young at the time.

And, uh, but it got to the point where it's just too much.

And at that point Marucci started taking off and doing better.

So we sold that business.

The bet. And is it still around the big leagues about Marush?

No, uh, crazy stories.

We actually kind of bought it back down the road and it's, uh, hitter's house now it's that same location where we are is our Marucci hitter's house here in town and they're still doing batting cages, retail store.

And there's an area in the back where people can do lessons and get better.

So it was, it was one of those things.

It's a, it's special to us because we wouldn't be here without big leagues.

All right. So 18 months in, you sell it and, uh, and because by this point you say, you guys, I mean, you, you, in your words Marucci bat companies taking off.

And from what I understand, this is 2008.

You guys are selling 15 ,000 bats a year at this point.

Yeah. So what's about, I'm, I'm thinking a little over a million dollars in revenue.

Probably. But you guys were now able to start to take a salary from, from that.

From the sales. Yeah.

I mean, its salary would have been really small, right?

We had made enough money and big leagues of Baton Rouge to hold us over a little bit.

And then for this next, uh, I would say this next adventure, we decided to go on with Marucci sports is what was where we then focused all of our attention.

And, and Jack Marucci still a third owner of the business.

He would pop in from time to time or what?

I mean, what, how was he, he wasn't making the bats at this point.

No, he, he was more of a, he would talk to the clubhouse managers and some of the players would call him and then he would, he would send in bat orders from his phone, but, you know, he was, he wasn't really coming to the, to the office at all and seeing the bats be made at all at that point.

But he had good connections and he was able to, to use those connections.

Yeah. He did. Okay.

Um, so this is something that's interesting to me.

Cause in 2008, um, I guess you guys had been making, had been using a wood mill.

Yeah. Right. This is where you're getting your wood from and what they were shipping.

This is a wood mill in Pennsylvania.

They were just shipping you pallets of wood to Baton Rouge.

And, and other bat companies were buying from them as well at this point in time.

And it was an Amish run mill that we would get the best wood from.

And I guess you get tipped off in June of 2008 that somebody, some other bat company is looking to buy them.

Was it was, when you say some other bad company, I'm just thinking there's just one big one.

Was it that one big one?

Yes. At that point in time, that's what we were told.

Uh, that the big one was, was at that point.

But you were, but do you think, do you think Louisville Slugger had noticed you guys at this point?

They did at that point.

When we started having Albert Pujols and some of those guys winning MVPs, uh, at that point in time, they started taking those, cause we were, we were taking a dent in the market at that point in time.

And so when we got word from that employee that, uh, our competitor was there trying to buy it, Joe and I actually got on a plane against our lawyer's advice.

Brought a document with us and bought the company.

Um, and we knew there was risk.

But, but how, so you want to acquire this company.

You're thinking we got to acquire this to keep the pipeline of wood, but how are you going to do that?

I mean, your, your revenue's low.

You've already, you're already over leveraged with all the equipment that you bought the few years earlier.

So how are you going to buy that, that mill?

We, we actually took on another investor and bought it outside of Marucci.

You, you created a separate company to buy this bill.

We did, we did and took on another investor and, and bought it under a different LLC name.

I mean, so basically it's a separate business.

Now the mill is selling the wood to Marucci.

So, I mean, the investor is, is getting that, I mean, he's it's automatically, there's going to be revenue coming into that business.

That's right. Now it would be a little bit different.

Cause we pretty much cut, we cut off every competitor at that time.

And so now Marucci at that point in time now had access to more wood than we've ever had before.

But now we needed more capital to go buy that wood.

And so that's when we took, we took on a couple of early investors in Marucci, that company alone, just small investors to help us pay for some of that.

How much did it cost to buy the mill?

I'm just curious, how much does it cost to do that?

Um, at that point in time, I think we were somewhere just under a half a million dollars for the whole mill.

Oh, it was only I said, it's the only, but half a million dollars to buy the mill.

Yeah. That seems like a pretty good deal.

It turned out to be a great deal.

Yeah. And we, we kept the team.

We kept the family involved.

You know, we, we covered a lot of debt that they obviously had at that time.

So we ended up paying a lot more than a half a million when you end up adding all the other stuff we paid.

You were, okay. So you now got the mill and you've kinda, but you cannot grow this business just by selling wooden bats to professional players, because there's a, that's a limited market.

I mean, that can't be more than a $10 million market opportunity, maybe.

So to really turn this into something you knew that you had to invest in the business to grow it further, what was the first thing you, you, you guys started to talk about, cause it seems to me like the opportunity is with like kids playing in little leagues and grown men playing in their fun softball

leagues, whatever it might be like that to me seems like where the market opportunity would be.

Yeah. Youth baseball, right?

And that's aluminum bats.

So that was our next focus is we wanted to come out with an aluminum bat.

And the aluminum bat was designed for high school and college players.

Yeah. And so this is a huge, this is a, like you're going to quintuple your potential market, right?

There's tons of college teams and there's rec teams and there's high school teams.

So, and probably aluminum bats, you could sell for more than a wooden bat, right?

Yeah. The bats, it was, you know, you can manufacture them easier.

You can mass produce them.

It was higher margins and it was a bigger addressable market, right?

That's kind of the big buzzword that we learned along the way, the total addressable market of wood, as you've highlighted is very small.

Right. Right. But, but in order to make aluminum bats, I mean, you guys were going to need an infusion of cash, right?

Like capital you, you, this, I think this is where you got introduced to this, um, this new potential investor, a guy named Reed Dickens, who would eventually become your CEO, right?

That's right. And I guess from, from what I've read Reed, um, had been working in politics and, and he, he wanted to get back into business.

Um, so I mean, the timing probably was good, right?

Yeah. And so Reed cold called us and I can tell you, he said, look, let me come down there and meet with, with you and Joe.

And Reed came down and he said, look, if we create this other separate LLC under Marucci sports, I can raise the money that we need and we can create this other brand and go do aluminum bats.

He kind of laid out a vision that we had never seen before.

What did he say? He just said, look, I think this company can be the number one bat in the game.

And Joe and I kind of looked at each other like, hold on, man, you got Louisville sluggers been here, you know, 120 years or whatever, like don't get carried away.

And he said, I really believe that we can create this stale industry.

Cause baseball at that time was pretty stale.

So Reed wanted to bring a different energy and come in and create this momentum around this brand that we had.

So, all right. So Reed comes in with all these ideas and says, let's start a separate company.

We'll call it Marucci sports.

100%. And he brings in some outside capital.

Um, and I guess it was like two, two and a half million dollars that he helps raise.

That's right. Some of it was players, but some of it was, you know, kind of, uh, I would say family office or just, you know, you know, wealthier people.

Well, it seems, it would seem to make sense to bring players in it.

Cause then they have skin in the game and if they're playing, they're using the bat.

So it's, it's a double win, right?

They're going to put in money and they're going to use the bats.

Yeah. Well, what we didn't realize is that when you're successful, you actually need more money than when you're not successful.

And we needed to go raise more capital fairly quickly after he joined and was the CEO and we were running because we were actually having some pretty good success early, uh, and we needed more capital.

Who are some of the players that, that got involved early on in that, in that early.

Yeah. So, I mean, uh, Albert Pujols, uh, was, uh, was an early one of course.

Um, you know, Ryan Vogelsong, the next giant at that time, you know, Sean Casey, Harold Reynolds, you know, we've had David Ortiz, Jose Bautista.

I mean, it was kind of a, a who's who of players will Clark much, my childhood idol, uh, was in there.

So we had a really good group of guys that we started going to, uh, to raise that next round of capital.

Um, and that's what really brought us to acquiring Marucci bat company and eliminating that license.

Cause as you're raising money, some of the people are like, their advisors were like, wait a minute, you don't own the brand and you're paying a royalty to Marucci bat company on everything we're doing.

Okay. So because in order to, to put the Marucci logo on Marucci sports products, you had to pay the Marucci bat company, which you were a third owner of to license the name because it's Jack Marucci's name.

So ultimately that had to be untangled.

Yeah. And that's what happened in 2011.

Is we negotiated with Marucci sports and Marucci bat company to acquire Marucci back company, become one company.

And so, um, I mean, Jack Marucci probably, you know, he had to agree, you and Joe and Jack Marucci, shown the third of it, and you guys probably were like, let's do it, but he had to agree to that.

He had to agree to either be paid a license fee or, or get some equity in the new business or sell his shares.

Yeah. And I think there was a little bit of all of that.

I think we all kind of rolled some of that.

We took some cash off the table.

Yeah. Look, we had great relationships with Jack.

I think he respected what we were doing and what we were trying to do.

I think he could finally see that there was some other opportunities out there.

He, you know, he had always kind of joked that all I want to do is pay for my kids' school and if, and that'd be happy.

Uh, obviously we paid a little bit more than the kid's school, but he trusted us to go build something, uh, with, with the name that we created together.

Right. And you start to produce an aluminum bat and I think, and it's available in the consumer market in early 2010.

So how did you get anybody to even care?

I mean, some, some kids probably knew about the Marucci wooden bats.

They did. And I think locally we probably did okay.

Early in 2009, we would go out to those tournaments that we would, and we would bring bats on the mobile tour and we would go bring bats out on the road and show people and let them hit with it.

And I would say 2009, we did.

Pretty well in the first year, but then when the NCAA changed the regulations to BB core, which is just a, basically a rule change that, that made the bats perform more wood -like everything changed.

Can we just unpack this for a little because this is really complicated.

BB core is a certification, right?

It stands for battle, batted ball coefficient of restitution and it's a safety performance testing and standard.

And, and the first year you had these bats come out, they were ready to go.

They had complied with this new standard.

That's right. And, and you guys were one of the few batting, you know, bat companies that had this ready to go because as they changed as the NCAA changed the certification, you guys could create the bat to that certification.

But the second year, 2011, so the first year was great, but then you were decertified in 2011 why what was wrong with the bat?

So they, they tested some bats and they said the bats in the field were testing higher than the limit.

What does higher than the limit mean?

They sent it to a lab at Washington state and they shoot a ball off a stationary bat and it measures the rebound of the bat.

And so they measure it every, you know, every inch along the barrel and they had sent us reports back and said that our bat had failed, that it was bouncing back too hard, which meant that it would give a player an unfair advantage.

That's, that's correct.

I see. At that point in time, we had no idea that there was like, you know, variances in the test and we didn't even really know what to do.

This was so new to us.

We didn't even have, you know, engineering labs at that time.

We were young in business.

We didn't know how to fight back at that time.

Right? Huh. So in 2012, we were having a big coaches party and I remember our engineer walking myself and our CEO at the time, uh, outside and saying, Hey, uh, the NCA just told me that they're going to decertify our bats and I literally couldn't speak and I was like, wait a minute, what does that mean?

We just bought Marucci bat company.

We just took on these shareholders.

All of our bats in the market, we're going to have to recall and we have the hottest bat right now in the market.

And I'm, I remember walking back to my hotel, thinking the company was done.

Uh, everything we had done to get to this point was over because I just didn't understand what was going on and how they could decertify it.

How much money did that cost you?

Cause you made all this product and now it's, I guess you could sell it to high school players.

But no, it was taken off from the high school too.

So when they decertified it, it was totally decertified.

So we had vessels coming over from Asia with all decertified bats on them.

What did you do with them?

Melt them down? Like, what do you, we did.

We, uh, we actually took them to a scrap yard and recycled them.

There was nothing else we could do with them.

And it was a, it was a multimillion dollar hit for a company that didn't have money.

I mean, in part, you know, again, like it's so fascinating because on the one hand, all your eggs were in that basket and the NCAA basket, but in the other hand, they had to be.

Yeah. They had no choice.

Cause that's where the market was.

So like the obstacle was the, there was no other way around it.

Like they can make or break a business, but it's so risky.

Like from an, I would just be thinking from like a business perspective, if that happened, like, did you guys, could you even, did you even anticipate the possibility of that happening?

We didn't. Right. Because we didn't change anything.

We sent a bat in it passed.

We didn't change anything in our production.

And next thing you know, we're getting decertification notices like, oh my gosh, what is going on?

And again, you find out down the road, obviously that we were taking so much market share that, you know, our competitors were sending our bats in, uh, to the test lab and trying to say that our bats were over the limit.

Um, and look, that's, that was a learning lesson for us.

Cause at that point in time, we then took bats from the field, send them to the lab and they, they were all over the limit, but nobody else was decertified, but us.

And so that was, you talk about frustration.

Uh, that was a, that was a tough learning, uh, lesson right there in 2012.

Was any part of you, like conspiratorial is not the right word because I don't think that's the right word, but any part of you suspicious that you guys were decertified because the, the bats were doing so well and the, and there were maybe more influential competitors who were trying to get the NCAA

to shut you down. Yeah, there's no question.

We've had conversations with some of those other companies across over the years.

And they said, we could take some, some hits from some smaller companies, but what you guys did, y 'all were taking so much market share, you know, we, we kind of had to slow you down.

We were growing so fast at the end of the day.

I can look back now and say it was a blessing because we weren't ready for that growth that we were having.

But at that point in time, that was the end.

Why don't we come back in just a moment, how Marucci sports recovers from the great aluminum bat meltdown of 2012.

Stay with us. I'm Guy Roz and you're listening to How I Built This.

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Hey, welcome back to How I Built This.

I'm Guy Roz. So it's 2014 and Marucci Sports is reeling from having its bats decertified.

The ball is coming up the batter's swing with too much power.

So to compensate, the company puts out a bunch of new bats, which frankly, are kind of underpowered.

Yeah, I think we overcorrected, right?

We came out with bats that were so far under the limit that didn't perform very well.

You weren't hit, they weren't hitting as well.

A hundred percent. We put some subpar product out there just to make sure we were under the limit.

And we had great selling, but we didn't have good sell through.

They weren't selling the kids, the kids weren't excited about the bats.

And so we had to do something.

Yeah. And then as soon as that happened, I was named CEO, I guess I would say early in 2014.

And I think that was one of the first things I did when I was named CEO is I made the very unpopular decision of taking back bats from our retailers.

You basically lost all this money.

You lost the money on the decertification, then you just flood the market with bats that were not as good to try and see if you could salvage this thing.

But that's another financial hit.

That's correct. So you just melted those bats down again that you took back?

We did. We, we, we did.

And, and I will say our, our board, that was the first time we had a board as an independent board of some really high profile and quality board members.

Uh, and it was pretty shocking for them for my first move to take those bats back, but they stuck with me and they trusted me through this whole process.

My first year was not very good.

Um, and I brought in a C a CFO that year that I said, Hey man, sorry, right after we hired you, uh, we're going to take these bats back.

So our number one customer and all our sales, we're going to take these bat, but I, I promise you it'll be the right move, moving forward.

And I do think they thought I was crazy at the beginning, but it ended up being probably the best decision we've ever made.

All right. So now you retooling the bats to make them the, at the standards and quality that, that, that you had come to be known among players, how long did it take now?

You're, you're 2014.

You're the CEO. How long did it take before you start to claw back?

Cause I'm still imagine it's going to take a while for you guys to get profitability and to recover from, you know, what happened in the previous two years.

Yeah. I, 2015 we were pretty, we were profitable again, fairly, very profitable actually.

And it was, and that was on the strength of, of better aluminum bats.

Better aluminum bats, deeper in wood bats, better in wood bats.

So everything started going that year.

And then we had more product categories, of course, that we were launching at that time, but 2015 was a big year for us.

Okay. That, and when you say big year, like breaking $10 million in revenue?

Uh, I'd say we were, uh, probably more like 25 million in revenue that year.

Wow. So you're 11 years into the business now, and now you're a player.

When you took over as CEO, was it clear to you that at that, this is 2014, was it clear to you that that within a few years, you needed to find an acquire to get you guys to the next level and, you know, to, to really bring in serious capital, to let you do what you wanted to do?

Yeah. I don't think so.

I think we thought we could do it on our own.

I really do. Um, we were putting together a great team.

We were having a lot of success.

Uh, we made a great acquisition with Victus in 2017.

Victus is a, was a company that was making custom wooden bat, wood bats.

Yeah. I mean, if you're out there, we see this up and coming company.

We were every single piece of wood we can make was going on the field to a major league player, right.

At the major level.

And so we couldn't make minor league player bats and we were having to turn down orders every year and we saw this company, Victus sports was getting all the younger players, getting the minor leaguers and getting all these young big league players that we couldn't service and we're like, man, this company

is doing a really good job.

And so we built a relationship with them over some years and we ended up acquiring them and, uh, you know, we could tell they were going to be the future in bats and quickly as we surpass Louisville Slugger, I think in, in 2013, they surpassed Louisville Slugger in 2018 is the number two bad and.

Used by major league players, I should say.

Correct. And those, and those are the, those are the stats that people are like, whoa, you're surpass Louisville Slugger on field.

And that's when people know that, you know, baseball is everybody knows Louisville Slugger.

And so when they hear that, that's kind of a big stat.

And so I think acquiring Victus was one of the biggest moves we made.

All right. And to, to overtake Louisville Slugger among professional players is a big deal, but Louisville Slugger was bigger with youth sports, for example.

So they may not have cared all that much.

I don't know, maybe they did or no, but, but I want to ask about Victus because this is another company they're making bats.

You guys acquired them in 2017.

It didn't make sense to just fold it into Marucci and just to stamp the Marucci name on the Victus bats.

Yeah, I don't think so.

Is it, is a different culture.

You know, Marucci has an honor the game feel and Victus has this change the game.

They're more artistic and creative and almost like graffiti type art.

And Marucci was more of this, uh, I don't want to say conservative brand.

Like we, we show up, we kind of joked about, we'd show up and our shirts will be tucked in, we'd be wearing suits and the Victus guys would show up in a t -shirt and hat on backwards.

Um, but it was, it was different and it worked together and we pushed each other to the point of, you know, we made each other better.

When did you start to make.

A decent salary. Um, by 2014, I imagine you're actually making a pretty good salary.

Yeah. We're making good money at that point in time, right.

When we started Marucci sports, we decided to take bigger salaries as we were raising some capital and, you know, we were putting in crazy hours.

You know, I was traveling all over the place to all of our dealers.

I was traveling to Asia.

I was still doing, you know, all the product meetings that I still do to this day.

So yeah, we were making more money at that point and not every hour is created equal.

There are certain people that add value without putting in the hours.

Right? I think what I did was I put in a lot more hours from the beginning, right?

I was, I was the guy that was, you know, here first turning on the lights and turning off the lights at night and traveling like crazy and really putting in the time, because I knew that the more I worked, the more success we were having.

And I kind of got addicted to that.

And I think in, in 2020, you guys get acquired by a private equity firm called Compass, I think it was for around like $200 million, right?

That's correct. Tell me the thinking around that acquisition.

It was, I imagine the idea would be, Hey, now that we have a bigger fish here, we can scale in the way we want to scale.

Yeah. I think some of it was in 2019, we decided that some of our shareholders had been in since 2009, right?

It was no real return because we kept putting money back in the company.

Right? This was an opportunity for us to return some capital to shareholders.

And at that point in time, we had had a lot of shareholders that had been in for a while.

So there was a little shareholder fatigue.

And, you know, we saw an opportunity with the success we were having to then capitalize on that, go to market.

And, you know, we went and did the whole road show with, with private equity and strategies, and, uh, add a great outcome for all of our shareholders, where everybody was, was super pleased and it was great for us as well.

And you stayed on as CEO.

I did. They kept my entire team.

Huh? You know, that acquisition was awesome for us and we quickly almost tripled our business, uh, within just three years with their ownership.

Compass basically, so they, they bought you guys for $200 million, you're making these acquisitions and growing, uh, and that's the playbook oftentimes for private equity, um, doesn't always work out, but it clearly did.

In November of 2023, they then sell the, the holding company that they, the parent company that they built around Marucci Sports, they sell it to another holding company called Fox factory for over half a billion dollars in November, 2023.

So a new parent company comes in.

I mean, wow, what an amazing, uh, return in just three years.

Yeah, it was, it was an incredible run for us to find Fox through this process is just a dream come true, going from private equity to a brand that literally has the same DNA of us.

And they Fox factory makes like mountain bikes, right?

That's right. Shocks trucks, bikes.

Yeah. You know, it's those high profile athletes.

And it's what's crazy is if you walk their halls, it's all bike riders.

It's all people that have the trucks they're, they're out in all the, you know, the desert races and they love it.

So it's got that same feeling as Marucci, obviously we were a lot smaller than Fox, but it's, it's been just amazing being a part of that family.

And you stayed on again, part of that deal.

You stayed on as CEO.

I stayed on, they kept my entire team again.

And they're investing in us and letting us go and it's been fun.

So let's talk about where this is heading now, because from what I gather, you guys are, and you're, you're set to do a couple hundred million dollars in revenue, right, Marucci sports this year.

And the, it's just basically the basic sort of knowledge I have about the baseball opportunity or the market would be, you know, for sure, Japan and Korea are huge opportunities.

They are, we've been highlighting Japan for the past five or six years.

We have a full team there now, a full office and a hitter's house located in Tokyo.

So we're doing a lot of investing in Japan.

We see that as a huge opportunity.

And I think that's our biggest goal is, is to grow our addressable market.

Right? Cause we know baseball, you know what the size of baseball is, softball is, is a huge emphasis of ours, you know, and then of course going in Japan and then other categories, there's plenty of other categories we're in now, but it's, it's not just these products that are out there.

We're just going to make them.

There has to be a story with it and had technology.

Yeah. So what is Maru?

If I say, what does Marucci sports today?

And I never met you before.

And I'm like, what, what is it?

What do you guys sell?

How do you describe the brand today?

You know, that's a, that's a good question.

We are definitely outside of the diamond.

Now, I think that was a probably a stigma we had for many, many, many years that we were just a bat company.

We, we, we now have our training facility.

We have apparel. Uh, we're, we've, we're launching footwear at the end of this year.

It's on field and training.

Like spikes, like like cleats and stuff.

That's correct. Yeah.

Cause you are a pitcher.

I mean, you could, I mean, is there a world where you make ball, you make baseballs?

We make baseballs now.

So we, we pretty much make every product for a baseball player head to toe.

Now, gloves, batting gloves, socks, you know, now footwear hats.

I mean, we, we pretty much have every product.

Now we like to say, we used to say we could outfit a player head to ankle.

Now, as, as of December, this year, it'll be head to toe.

All right. So this year you brokered a deal with Major League Baseball.

Yeah. And starting in the 2025 season through the 2028, you will become the Ruchi bats, will become the official bat of Major League Baseball, the only, the only the second company to get that designation after, of course, Louisville.

So you guys are, the Louisville sluggers always been the official bat of the MLB next year, there'll be Marucci bats.

Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a pinch yourself moment, right?

This is kind of a validation of all that hard work and all the years we put into this to be the official bat.

Um, and of course, Victus as well, will have Marucci and Victus with both the official bats next year.

So that's a, that's a huge opportunity for us.

We don't take it lightly and, uh, you know, we want to bring that new cool factor to the game.

Like we like to change.

We like, we like the, the new changes that are happening in MLB and making it more fun for kids to play and making the games faster.

We think it's really good for the game.

Kurt, when you think about where, where you got, you know, where you got to here, we're talking about, again, if, if I met you in 2004, I'd be like, I don't know, man, you know, wouldn't bats, you know, the market opportunity here is limited.

Yeah. So 10s, a thousand of these things, like I, you know, I would have been skeptical.

But here, here you are, you know, you're now heading up a brand that's doing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue a year.

How much of, of where you got to now, do you attribute to the work you put in and how much you think has to do with just getting luck, just getting lucky breaks.

I mean, that's a, that's a great question.

I think we've been very lucky along the way, just where we're located, being in Baton Rouge, we've had some things open, doors open just from being here, but, uh, I definitely can say just being consistent and putting in the time has helped.

Yeah. You know, there's a sense of pride in this, I'll be honest with you.

And I think when we sold this last time, it came out, uh, when I was addressing our whole team, it's the first time, not an emotional person, uh, but it came out and as I was addressing the team that I broke down, I couldn't get it out.

It was just, it was such a special moment to us that we got to that point to sell to Fox and then I enjoyed it for about one week.

And now I'm driven again to do it again.

I mean, I'm having fun.

I got to be honest with you.

This is such a challenge for me.

I kind of like it. I can't stay home.

And this team here is spectacular.

And, you know, I'd go to battle with these guys any day.

That's Kurt Ainsworth, co -founder and CEO of Marucci Sports.

By the way, even though Kurt's MLB career was cut short by injury, he did play a role in at least one legendary triumph as a pitcher for Team USA during the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

That year for the first time in history, the U .S.

became gold medal champions in baseball, beating Cuba in the finals 4 -0.

That game became known as the miracle on grass.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week.

Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show.

And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, please sign up for my newsletter at guyraz .com or on Substack.

This episode was produced by Devin Schwartz with music composed by Ramtin Arablui.

It was edited by Niva Grant with research help from Kathryn Seifer.

Our engineers were Maggie Luthar and Jimmy Keighley.

Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, J .C.

Howard, Karla Estevez, Sam Paulson, Chris Messini, Kerry Thompson, John Isabella, and Elaine Coates.

I'm Guy Roz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

If you like How I Built This, you can listen early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

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[From Injured Pitcher to Industry Disruptor: The Rise of Marucci Sports]-[Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth]

📋 Summary

The Unlikely Ascent of Marucci Sports: From a Backyard Shed to MLB Official Partner

The Origin of a Vision

Challenging the Status Quo

The Turning Point: Innovation and Resilience

Scaling and the Future

Conclusion: Beyond the Diamond

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript