Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth

No athlete wishes for an injury, but when Kurt Ainsworth’s bad shoulder derailed his professional pitching career, it created a big opportunity. Kurt and two partners started a wooden bat company in his backyard, bringing their intimate knowledge of baseball to every bat they sold. Soon, big-name players like Sammy Sosa were swinging them, but Kurt knew they had to expand to aluminum bats to reach the wider field of non-professional players. The company faced a near death experience when the NCAA decertified its bats for being too powerful, but eventually regained its footing. In 2013, Marucci Sports was acquired for over half a billion dollars; and next year, Marucci will slide past Louisville Slugger to become the official bats of Major League Baseball. This episode was produced by Devan Schwartz with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant with research from Katherine Sypher. Our engineers were Maggie Luthar and Jimmy Keeley. You can follow HIBT on Twitter https://twitter.com/HowIBuiltThis & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis, and email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2 a.m. kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people? So they asked over 100,000 people their hopes and their fears and are publishing what they find, even the uncomfortable parts. Me? I've got my own hard question about AI. Here it is. If everyone has access to something that can help them write the business plan,

• 0:46Guy Raz?

  build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea, what separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/hibt. We get support from U.S. Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't.

• 1:32Guy Raz?

  Say you're 18 months in. Business is growing. You've got expenses coming from six directions. Gas for the van, office supplies, your phone bill, team lunches that are actually client meetings, and you're putting it all on whatever card you grabbed in year one. You're not thinking about it. Why would you? You've got bigger problems. But here's the thing. Path A, you keep going like that. End of the year, you're sorting through statements, trying to figure out what went where. You've left hundreds, maybe thousands, on the table in rewards you never earned, money that could have gone back into the business. Path B, you pause and get the US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business Card. Now, you're earning 3% cash back

• 2:16Guy Raz?

  on gas and EV charging, office supply stores, cellphone service, and restaurants. You pick up an extra $750 cash back as a bonus. And you've got a low APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months while you're scaling. Same business, same expenses, two completely different outcomes based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. If you travel often, you'll want to hear about this unprecedented offer. For the first time ever,

• 3:00Guy Raz?

  new Delta SkyMiles Reserve American Express Card members can earn two Delta Comfort Round Trip flights for travel within the 48 contiguous US states, Puerto Rico, or the US Virgin Islands. Plus, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles towards your next getaway. And who doesn't appreciate an elevated airport experience? Delta SkyMiles Reserve Card members get access to the Delta Sky Club, your pre-flight oasis to recharge, with 15 visits and four one-time guest passes each medallion year when flying Delta together. That's up to $950 in annual value. Value estimate based on $50 per visit rate to purchase additional visits

• 3:45Guy Raz?

  or bring a guest to the Delta Sky Club. Make every trip feel more rewarding with the car that upgrades your travel. Apply today at delta.com/cardsocial. Offer ends November 4, 2026. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Flights are fulfilled as flight certificates valid for Delta Comfort or Delta Maine to select domestic destinations. Book 21-plus days in advance. Up to $80 per person and taxes and fees apply. Other restrictions apply. When I pull up to a gas pump to fill my car, I'm not thinking about chemistry or engineering. I'm thinking about getting in, filling up, and getting on with my day. And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talked to on this show, because the best

• 4:27Guy Raz?

  ones obsess over things their customers will never see. Tiny details, invisible improvements, relentless iteration. And not because anyone's watching, but because it makes the product better. That's what the mobile brand does. It engineers fuel the same way great founders engineer their products. Mobile Supreme Plus Premium Gas helps keep engines three times cleaner, which can mean better performance and improved gas mileage. It's for people who care about what's under the hood, even if they never see it. Three times cleaner compared to mobile regular gas in port fuel-injected engines. Actual results may vary. Visit mobilefuels.com for details.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  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 decertify our bats.

• 5:30Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 5:31Speaker 01

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

• 5:36Guy Raz?

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

• 5:40Speaker 01

  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 remember walking back to my hotel, thinking the company was done.

• 5:52Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 5:54Speaker 01

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

• 6:06Guy Raz?

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

• 6:18Guy Raz?

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

• 6:36Guy Raz?

  Since 1884, a single brand, Louisville Slugger, has been virtually synonymous with one sport: baseball. The company's 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

• 7:20Guy Raz?

  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 sign multimillion-dollar deals. The average length of a career in Major League Baseball is less than three years. The median salary is around $1.5 million a year. That's a lot of cash, but after taxes, after paying your agent and lawyer, most guys are

• 8:02Guy Raz?

  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 an hour over and over and over again, you are likely to damage your arm.

• 8:47Guy Raz?

  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.

• 9:29Guy Raz?

  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 and 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.

• 10:14Guy Raz?

  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.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  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."

• 10:36Guy Raz?

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

• 10:39Speaker 01

  He was, he was. And he's from New Orleans, Louisiana, so I always woke up every morning, checked the box score 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.

• 10:50Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  You know, 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, you know, all the teachers would kind of laugh at me and say, "Nah, nobody really gets to do that." And again, I was small on my team.

• 11:03Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 11:04Speaker 01

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

• 11:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah, yeah. And obviously, we're going to get there. And you grew, I mean, into a really serious ballplayer. I mean, I think by the time you were a senior in high school, you were pitching, like, how fast were you pitching at the time?

• 11:19Speaker 01

  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.

• 11:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And we should mention, I 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, like, 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.

• 11:48Speaker 01

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

• 12:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah, it's totally crazy. I know for college, you wound up playing for LSU, your local university, Louisiana State, which it's one of those schools that I just, it is very good at baseball. Like, some of, I think some of the greatest players, like Alex Bregman... The pitcher Aaron Nola, DJ LeMahieu, I mean, lots of amazing, incredible roster 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?

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So during that year, I trained, I threw, I felt okay and then, you know, I had some elbow injuries and then went to summer ball. And in my first game in summer ball, I ended up throwing a full game, a complete game no hitter, but blew out my elbow.

• 12:48Guy Raz?

  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?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Extraordinary pain. And I had some teammates on the team that were like, man, come on, you gotta suck it up, you gotta go, you're, you know, you're throwing well, we need you to pitch for LSU next year. So I was like, all right, I'm, I can do this. And so I pitched the whole game and then my, my elbow just blew up and it was a...

• 13:11Guy Raz?

  Wow. So you were just damaging it more and more and more over the course of this, like, three hours. But then eventually, I think you got surgery to, to fix that injury and it, it was, I guess, a torn ligament in your elbow?

• 13:24Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 13:25Guy Raz?

  And then you come back to the team in, in 1999. You have this incredible season, like 157 strikeouts in 130 innings. You had like a 13 and 6 record for, I mean, it's awesome. I mean, you start, and you started to get scouts coming to look at you play, right?

• 13:41Speaker 01

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

• 14:01Guy Raz?

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

• 14:15Speaker 01

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

• 14:22Guy Raz?

  I can't imagine.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:23Guy Raz?

  I mean, it must have been incredible.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  It was.

• 14:26Guy Raz?

  So you get drafted. Now, this is the thing about baseball is, and it's, it's different, it's even different back then than 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, what, did you make a bunch of money on that sign, by signing with the Giants?

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was, it was, it was nice, right? It was a good 1.3 million dollar start at 20 years old.

• 15:02Guy Raz?

  Wow. So that's amazing. So you, you get this opportunity.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:06Guy Raz?

  And you go, and we'll, I want to 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, they blow it. They blow all the cash. Buy house, buy car, pay taxes, help their friends, and they're 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.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  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'll be honest with you, I didn't really enjoy it along the way.

• 16:01Guy Raz?

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

• 16:06Speaker 01

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

• 16:09Guy Raz?

  And then, you got a good season 2002.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:12Guy Raz?

  2003.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:15Guy Raz?

  I mean, you got 11 starts. I mean, you're, you're, you're doing well. And then, like, right when the sea, like, right when it's summertime, the peak of baseball, early summer, you get injured. Your shoulder.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, this time was different.

• 16:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  And they finally figured out after my 11th 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.

• 16:49Guy Raz?

  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.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so Dave Rigetti was our pitching coach at the 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 bye? 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.

• 17:18Guy Raz?

  Wow. You can't even say goodbye to your teammates?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  So that one, that one hurt.

• 17:23Guy Raz?

  Wow. There it's like clear out your, don't even clear out your desk. The security will escort you from the premises. It's so crazy.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Why, why is it like that? Why won't, why, why don't they say, cause I've heard this before. Why aren't they like, yeah, go say goodbye to the guys and go like, you know, have a last drink. Why don't they do that?

• 17:40Speaker 01

  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,

• 17:48Guy Raz?

  Oh, you were in Chicago when that happened?

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were in Chicago on a road trip.

• 17:52Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Then I was like, well, I'm going to show them. I'm gonna go to Baltimore and really be the pitcher that they didn't realize they had.

• 17:58Guy Raz?

  Wow. All right. So you go to Baltimore.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 18:00Guy Raz?

  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?

• 18:14Speaker 01

  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. Will 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. And 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, my relationship with Jack Marucci started.

• 18:41Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  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.

• 18:47Guy Raz?

  And when you were back in Louisiana, you know, first of all, you're the guy who made the majors. So, so people are like, dude, what are you doing here? Right? You would see people.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:56Guy Raz?

  And, and it would probably. Probably kind of yet to explain what's going on and I don't know, probably probably wasn't a great time.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  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 you're rehabbing, but it's just not the same. It's just not.

• 19:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  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 psychologically a lot. I just couldn't stay healthy.

• 19:32Guy Raz?

  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.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. What a crazy story.

• 20:10Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Uh, he's just an incredible athlete, obviously. He was Mr. Football or Mr. Baseball in Louisiana as well. When he was coming out of high school, the same years as I did in 1996, but.

• 20:19Guy Raz?

  You knew who he was.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  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.

• 20:35Guy Raz?

  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?

• 20:50Speaker 01

  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 Geno 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 because he was a hitter. I was a pitcher.

• 21:18Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  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.

• 21:25Guy Raz?

  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, especially at that time, very unusual for a Little League player to use a wooden bat. They use aluminum bats in Little League.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  You know, he, he studied the industry and started making some pretty good bats. And it just how the stars aligned is, you know, his house is two, two streets away from mine at the time in Baton Rouge. And so Jack was just kind of whittling in his backyard. He had a Wolfball 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 knee's not rehabbing very well. It's not coming back. My shoulder's 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?

• 22:17Guy Raz?

  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 at LSU also has access to a lot of, potentially a lot of pros.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct. Yeah. And Jack had 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.

• 22:42Guy Raz?

  He was on the Orioles?

• 22:43Speaker 01

  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, in a major league game.

• 22:55Guy Raz?

  And it was just a no name bat. It was just a bat that was?

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, he had a logo on it.

• 22:59Guy Raz?

  He did, okay.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  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, sticker on it, Marucci Bat Company. So it was amazing. He had Eduardo use it. And then, believe it or not, Barry Larkin used it, Hall of Famer, and got a hit.

• 23:16Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  And then Mike Cameron used it and hit a homerun.

• 23:19Guy Raz?

  Thought, but okay, let's, let's back up for a sec. What was so special about his bats? I mean, they're wooden bats. There, there are other companies that made, 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?

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I don't think they were at that time. I'm gonna 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'd order a dozen players and only three or four of them would be good enough to use in a game.

• 23:54Guy Raz?

  Only three or four out of the dozen bats? Why is that?

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so when you go, it was just commonplace to use send 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 gonna use these for game. I'm gonna use these three or four for batting practice and the rest, I'm just gonna 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 gonna start a bat company where every player in the major leagues get the best wood.

• 24:41Guy Raz?

  You know, it's, it's interesting because a wooden bat is, I mean, first of all, most people who play baseball, they, 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 even if it's the same brand on it, the different bats in different ways.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we'd like to say a wood bat's the best training tool out there. If you can learn how to hit with a wooden bat and find the sweet spot on that, when you pick up your aluminum or your composite bat, you're gonna be a better hitter.

• 25:20Guy Raz?

  So, all right, when you, you go to Jack Marucci, you and Joe go to him and you say, hey, we wanna turn this bat thing you're doing into a business. And what was his initial reaction?

• 25:33Speaker 01

  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.

• 25:47Guy Raz?

  So at the time, who were the, I mean, what companies were making bats? There's 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?

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Of course. Yeah. Louisville Slugger. I mean, that was the, the crown jewel in the space, uh, pretty much owned the market.

• 26:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So Jack was initially skeptical, saying, this is not really where I want to put my time and effort. But, 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?

• 26:21Speaker 01

  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.

• 26:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  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 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.

• 26:50Guy Raz?

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

• 26:59Speaker 01

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

• 27:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  The savings, right? So, you know, day to day money coming in was, was not matching what my spend was going out.

• 27:13Guy Raz?

  Huh. All right. This is September 2004. You guys start the Marucci Bat 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?

• 27:38Speaker 01

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

• 27:41Guy Raz?

  Makes sense. Yep.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  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? 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.

• 28:07Guy Raz?

  Okay. This is the fall of 2004. You're still rehabilitating, hoping to come back for the 2005 baseball season, right?

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:16Guy Raz?

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

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Still an Oriole at that time. 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.

• 28:30Guy Raz?

  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 was he teaching you guys how to like use, you know, table saws and, and, and lathing machines and stuff? Or did you just naturally have that ability? Like, how, how was that working?

• 28:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 28:56Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  We had a big CNC lathe. We had engraving machines. We had sanding machines. I mean, we went all out on equipment.

• 29:03Guy Raz?

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

• 29:08Speaker 01

  We were several hundred thousand dollars deep in equipment.

• 29:11Guy Raz?

  To make baseball bats?

• 29:13Speaker 01

  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 at night.

• 29:36Guy Raz?

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

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Oof. Back then, I think it's probably a couple of minutes to cut it, but then you got a, you know, a couple of minutes to sand it, then you got to stain it, let it dry, you know, and then they 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.

• 29:53Guy Raz?

  I've read 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? This is like a giant piece of bone, by the way.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  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, at 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.

• 30:29Guy Raz?

  Wow, and a cow femur is better than like a steel rod?

• 30:32Speaker 01

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

• 30:35Guy Raz?

  I got you, all right.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  As we've gone on, we've used other products that are not cow femurs. We started with the cow femur.

• 30:42Guy Raz?

  I got it. It's a better story than using, you know, modern technology. All right, so you guys are doing this through the winter. And then you go back for spring training, back to, so you're gonna go to Florida, go back and work out with the guys at the Orioles, hoping to obviously make the roster, right?

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 31:00Guy Raz?

  And you come with a bunch of bats with the intention of handing them out to your teammates?

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, 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.

• 31:17Guy Raz?

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

• 31:21Speaker 01

  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.

• 31:28Guy Raz?

  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, because the NFL, MLB, they're so obsessive over anybody.

• 31:44Guy Raz?

  Being involved in those leagues 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?

• 31:52Speaker 01

  We got licensed that year.

• 31:54Guy Raz?

  You got a license in the MLB. Okay. Okay, so once you got the approval, then it was okay to use it in major league baseball. Okay. And in terms of like weight, for example, because you said that you were on the Orioles, right? And 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?

• 32:22Speaker 01

  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 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.

• 32:38Guy Raz?

  Makes sense, yep.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  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 others, you know, the phone would go silent and they'd 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.

• 33:17Guy Raz?

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

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:22Guy Raz?

  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.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's another lesson we learned early. I think we started 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 wood 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. It made for some uncomfortable conversations when you would miscut a bat or missand a bat or misprint a bat. You're like, ooh, you just wasted a really good piece of wood.

• 34:05Guy Raz?

  So what would you do with the wood that you're not going to, because if it had to be perfect for the professional players, you'd just like turn it into sawdust or what would you do with it?

• 34:13Speaker 01

  No, we would do a lot of souvenir bats. We did a lot of graduation bats, birth bats, 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 Laxton, 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.

• 34:45Guy Raz?

  All right. So also from what I gather, pretty soon after you guys started this business, you shifted from ash wood to maple wood. Why does that matter? Why is maple better than ash?

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was, that was a huge move for us. That was kind of one of the early ways the stars aligned for us and the industry changed. You know, Barry Bonds made maple popular. He came in and started hitting with maple and he was, you know, 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. 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 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 over ash. And then the Emerald Ash Beetle, the Ash Bore Beetle came in and kind of wiped out most of the ash in the, in the United States. So then

• 35:43Speaker 01

  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.

• 35:50Guy Raz?

  Okay, let's go back to spring training 2005 with the Orioles. You guys get the MLB to get licensed by the MLB. So they're, they're legal. You are handing them out to players. Any, by the way, any, because 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?

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. With some Hall of Famers on that team and some superstars, right? I mean, well, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Brian Roberts.

• 36:19Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  But yeah, to have those guys use it and validate the product, I think that is when we knew we were on to something.

• 36:26Guy Raz?

  Were you, I mean, at that time, did you have to pay players to agree to just test out your bats, 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 gonna use your product until I get a, like, it's totally different world, for the worse, I think. But back then, could you've just been like, hey, Rafael Palmeiro, like, use my bat? And he'd be like, sure.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  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 gonna 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.

• 37:10Guy Raz?

  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?

• 37:16Speaker 01

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

• 37:21Guy Raz?

  And by the way, I, I should, we should have, I should have asked you this. You called it Marucci bat company, cause it was, cause Jack was making them. And that was the only reason. You just thought it sounded cool.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  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.

• 37:47Guy Raz?

  Prada, Gucci, Ferrari.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:50Guy Raz?

  Marucci.

• 37:51Speaker 01

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

• 37:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  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?

• 38:03Guy Raz?

  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 is it just the contract, they gotta pay you no matter what? It's pay or play?

• 38:23Speaker 01

  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'll get your minor league pay. And I had already been sent down that year, you know, 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.

• 38:40Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was two kids, not having the salary, coming home, working for a company for free. It was, it was definitely challenging times.

• 38:49Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, Kurt 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 Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 39:07Guy Raz?

  Does your team want a website that looks and feels handcrafted but is still fast to ship? Well, Framer is built exactly for that. With Framer, you design on a visual canvas with responsive layouts, hosting, and a CMS built in, so the work is production-ready from day one. And you can get it done with help from Framer's AI agents. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. Prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. AI agents and humans work together. The agents bring speed and scale,

• 39:51Guy Raz?

  and people bring taste, judgment, and control. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply. AI isn't just opening new business opportunities, it's changing the way businesses get work done. The questions they ask, the decisions they make, the routine tasks they can hand off. That's the idea behind NetSuite Next, the next generation of NetSuite with AI woven into the tools your business already relies on.

• 40:34Guy Raz?

  NetSuite Next surfaces insights exactly when you need them, puts agents to work on routine tasks and problems, and lets you ask complex questions in plain language, like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together, and that shift is already underway. That's why NetSuite wants to put a New expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI Is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire organization and how to position your business to prosper from it.

• 41:19Guy Raz?

  If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI Is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. Netsuite.com/built.

• 41:43Guy Raz?

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

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, when the season ended, I was basically released. You know, 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. Then, you know, started working out for teams that, you know, that really that offseason, November, December throw-in, and then hopefully to get signed to go to spring training one more time to give it a run.

• 42:24Guy Raz?

  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, you're not doing serious revenue at this point.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  No, we weren't doing, and especially you have three partners, and you also have employees there every day.

• 42:48Guy Raz?

  People helping you to do what?

• 42:50Speaker 01

  So we're paying, we're paying guys to help us sand bats, paint bats, you know, engrade 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 in to buy more inventory because wood was expensive.

• 43:08Guy Raz?

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

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:15Guy Raz?

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

• 43:33Speaker 01

  We did, and, 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.

• 43:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  And now I'm in the National League, so I was hitting. So I really had better bats than our hitters and it, it became, it was pretty funny that you see hitters go up and take my bats to go out into, into the games. But, you know, I just, I, 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. So, you know, I threw one game in, in a field and my, my wife was there, my kids were there, my family was there actually at this game and I walked over to them, I said, I'm glad y'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, I can't go anymore. I gotta have, I gotta go see a doctor.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  So they flew me to Los Angeles and they did MRIs again. And the doctor said, man, you're, 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. He goes, 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 then the other thing is I knew my career was over that day.

• 44:52Guy Raz?

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

• 44:55Speaker 01

  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, lob my arms in a sling. So I mean, we've had some crazy things happen along the ways.

• 45:08Guy Raz?

  Wait, how was that baby delivered?

• 45:11Speaker 01

  In the front seat of our Tahoe. And I, 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.

• 45:26Guy Raz?

  Oh my God.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  She's a trooper.

• 45:29Guy Raz?

  All right, so, so you're done.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:33Guy Raz?

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

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:36Guy Raz?

  And. Did it feel cathartic? Did it feel like, okay, now I'm just gonna get this dream up and now focus? Or did it feel, were you sad about it?

• 45:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 46:14Guy Raz?

  All right. So you, you're out of baseball and you've got no salary. You're, you have no salary. You've got three children.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:23Guy Raz?

  And you've put all of your money into the, into the equipment for this baseball business, which is far from profitable.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:31Guy Raz?

  So what are you gonna do to make money?

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Well, you know, my, my wife kinda gave me that hard discussion of like, hey, what are you gonna do? You know, baseball's over. What are you gonna do? You guys need to start making some money because we weren't taking anything out of Marucci. Couldn't afford to. So Joe and I got together and we started another business in Baton Rouge called The Big Leagues of Baton Rouge.

• 46:49Guy Raz?

  The Big Leagues of Baton Rouge?

• 46:51Speaker 01

  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.

• 47:08Guy Raz?

  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?

• 47:20Speaker 01

  High school and youth mainly. So Joe and I would show up at 6:30 in the morning and work for Marucci from 6:30 to 2:30. We would kinda change into our PE uniforms, we called it. And then we would go do lessons till 9:00 PM, Monday through Friday. And then lessons on Sunday, 12 to 6:00. And we were booked out for several months at a time. We were doing 200, I think 220 private lessons each a month.

• 47:42Guy Raz?

  Wow. So you were basically working like?

• 47:47Guy Raz?

  12, 15 hour days.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  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 was just too much. And at that point, Marucci started taking off and, and doing better. So we sold that business.

• 48:06Guy Raz?

  The bat, and is it still around? The big leagues of Baton Rouge?

• 48:09Speaker 01

  No, uh, crazy stories. We actually kind of bought it back down the road and it's a hitter's house now. It's, 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 a, an, an area in the back where people can do lessons and get better. So it was, it was one of those things that's, uh, it's special to us because we wouldn't be here without big leagues of Baton Rouge.

• 48:29Guy Raz?

  All right. So 18 months in, you sell it and, uh, and cause by this point you say, you guys, I mean, you, you, in your words, Marucci bat company is taking off. And from what I understand, this is 2008, you guys are selling 15,000 bats a year at this point.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:46Guy Raz?

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

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 48:51Guy Raz?

  But you guys were now able to start to take a salary from, from that, from the sales?

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's salary would have been really small.

• 48:58Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  We had made enough money in 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 in with Marucci Sports is what was where we then focused all of our attention.

• 49:10Guy Raz?

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

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:16Guy Raz?

  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?

• 49:22Speaker 01

  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 bad 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.

• 49:35Guy Raz?

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

• 49:39Speaker 01

  He did.

• 49:40Guy Raz?

  Okay. Um, so this is something that's interesting to me because in 2008.

• 49:46Guy Raz?

  I guess you guys had been making, had been using a wood mill.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:50Guy Raz?

  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?

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, 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.

• 50:07Guy Raz?

  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 bat company, I'm just thinking there's just one.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:18Guy Raz?

  Big one. Was it that one big one?

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Yes. At that point in time, that's what we were told, that the big one was, was.

• 50:23Guy Raz?

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

• 50:29Speaker 01

  They did at that point. When we started having Albert Pujols and some of those guys winning MVPs at that point in time, they, they started taking notice. 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 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.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  And we knew there was risk.

• 50:53Guy Raz?

  But, but how, so you want to acquire this company. You're thinking we got to acquire this to keep the pipeline of, of wood. But how are you going to do that? I mean, your, your revenue is low. You've already, you already over leveraged with all the equipment that you bought a few years earlier. So how are you going to buy that, that mill?

• 51:13Speaker 01

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

• 51:16Guy Raz?

  You, you created a separate company to buy this mill?

• 51:19Speaker 01

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

• 51:24Guy Raz?

  I mean, so basically as 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.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  That's right. Now it would be a little bit different because 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 bat company alone, just small investors to help us pay for some of that wood.

• 51:58Guy Raz?

  How, how much did it cost to buy the mill? I'm just curious. How much does it cost to do that?

• 52:03Speaker 01

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

• 52:07Guy Raz?

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

• 52:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:11Guy Raz?

  That seems like a pretty good deal.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  It turned out to be a great deal.

• 52:15Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  And we kept the team, we kept the family involved.

• 52:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  You know, 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 in all the other stuff we paid.

• 52:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You were, okay, so you now got the mill and you've got a, but you cannot grow this business just by selling wooden bats to professional players because 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 guys started to talk about? Because it seems to me like the opportunity is with like kids playing in little leagues and grown men playing in their fun softball leagues, wherever it might be. Like that, to me, seems like where the market opportunity would be.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  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.

• 53:14Guy Raz?

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

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:18Guy Raz?

  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?

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, the bats, it was, you know, you can manufacture them easier. You could 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.

• 53:47Guy Raz?

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

• 54:04Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 54:05Guy Raz?

  And I guess from, from what I've read, Reed had been working in politics and he wanted to get back into business. So, I mean, the timing probably was good, right?

• 54:15Speaker 01

  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, 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.

• 54:31Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 54:32Speaker 01

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

• 54:35Guy Raz?

  What did he say?

• 54:36Speaker 01

  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 Slugger's 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 because 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.

• 55:02Guy Raz?

  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.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 55:13Guy Raz?

  And he brings in some outside capital. And I guess it was like two, two and a half million dollars that he helps raise.

• 55:20Speaker 01

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

• 55:28Guy Raz?

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

• 55:39Speaker 01

  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 and we needed more capital.

• 55:56Guy Raz?

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

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, I mean, Albert Pujols was, was an early one, of course. You know, Ryan Vogel song, the next giant at that time, you know, Sean Casey, Harold Reynolds, you know, we've had David Ortiz, Jose Batista. I mean, it was kind of a, a who's who of players. Will Clark, my, my childhood idol was in there. So we had a really good group of guys that we started going to, to raise that next round of capital. And that's what really brought us to acquiring Marucci Bat Company and eliminating that license. Because 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?

• 56:40Guy Raz?

  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.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:52Guy Raz?

  To license the name because it's Jack Marucci's name. So ultimately that had to be untangled.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's what happened in 2011 is we negotiated with Marucci Sports and Marucci Bat Company to acquire Marucci Bat Company, become one company.

• 57:08Guy Raz?

  And so, I mean, Jack Marucci probably, you know, he had to agree, you and Joe and Jack Marucci each on 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 get some equity in the new business, or sell his shares.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  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. You know, he had always kind of joked that all I want to do is pay for my kid's school, and I'd be happy. Obviously, we paid a little bit more than the kid's school, but he trusted us to go build something with the name that we created together.

• 57:53Guy Raz?

  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, I guess some kids probably knew about the Marucci Wooden Bats.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  They did. And I think locally, we probably did okay early in 2009. We would go out to those tournaments, 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 Corp, which is just a, basically a rule change that made the bats perform more wood-like, everything changed.

• 58:36Guy Raz?

  Can we just unpack this for a look? Because this is really complicated.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  It is.

• 58:40Guy Raz?

  BB Corp is a certification, right? It stands for Battle Batted Ball Coefficient of Restitution. And it's a safety performance testing and standard. And the first year, you had these bats come out, they were ready to go. They had complied with this new standard.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 58:58Guy Raz?

  And you guys were one of the few batting, you know, bat companies that had this ready to go, because 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?

• 59:20Speaker 01

  So they tested some bats.

• 59:22Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  And they said the bats in the field were testing higher than the limit.

• 59:26Guy Raz?

  What does higher than the limit mean?

• 59:28Speaker 01

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

• 59:42Guy Raz?

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

• 59:46Speaker 01

  That's, that's correct.

• 59:47Guy Raz?

  I see, okay.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  At that point in time, we had no idea that there was like, you know, variances in the test and we, 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?

• 1:00:03Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  So in 2012, we were having a big coaches party and I remember our engineer, walking myself and our CEO at the time, outside and saying, hey, uh, the NCAA 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.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  All of our bats in the market, we're going to have to recall and we're the hottest bat right now in the market. And I'm, I remember walking back to my hotel, thinking the company was done. 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.

• 1:00:42Guy Raz?

  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 or players, but.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:01:00Guy Raz?

  What did you do with them? Melt them down? Like what do you?

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  We did. We, 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.

• 1:01:13Guy Raz?

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

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:24Guy Raz?

  You had no choice because that's where the market was. So like the obstacle was the, there was no other way around it. Like they could 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?

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  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 our competitors were sending our bats in to the test lab and trying to say that our bats were over the limit. And look, that was a learning lesson for us because at that point in time, we then took bats from the field, sent them to the lab, and they were all over the limit, but nobody else was decertified but us. And so you talk about frustration. That was a tough learning lesson right there in 2012.

• 1:02:24Guy Raz?

  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 bats were doing so well and there were maybe more influential competitors who were trying to get the NCAA to shut you down?

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

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

• 1:02:55Guy Raz?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:03:09Guy Raz?

  When 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 Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 1:03:34Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2014, and Marucci Sports is reeling from having its bats decertified. The ball is coming off 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.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we overcorrected, right? We came out with bats that were so far under the limit that didn't perform very well.

• 1:04:02Guy Raz?

  They weren't hitting as well.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  100%. We put some subpar product out there just to make sure we were under the limit. And we had great sell-in, but we didn't have good sell-through. They weren't selling to kids. The kids weren't excited about the bats. And so we had to do something.

• 1:04:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

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

• 1:04:35Guy Raz?

  You basically lost all this money. So you lost the money on the decertification.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:40Guy Raz?

  Then you flood the market with bats that were not as good.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Guy Raz?

  To try and see if you could salvage this thing. But that's another financial hit.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 1:04:50Guy Raz?

  So you just melted those bats down again that you took back?

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  We did. We did. And I will say our board, that was the first time we had a board. It was an independent board of some really high profile and quality board members. 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. And I brought in a CFO that year that I said, hey, man, sorry. Right after we hired you, 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 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.

• 1:05:32Guy Raz?

  All right. So now you're retooling the bats to make them at the standards and quality that you had come to be known among players.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:05:42Guy Raz?

  How long did it take now? You're 2014, you're the CEO. How long did it take before you start to claw back? Cause I'm still imagining 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.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

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

• 1:06:02Guy Raz?

  And that was on the strength of better aluminum bats?

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:06:17Guy Raz?

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

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

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

• 1:06:28Guy Raz?

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

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Guy Raz?

  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 acquirer to get you guys to the next level and, you know, to really bring in serious capital to let you do what you wanted to do?

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think so. I think we thought we could do it on our own. I really do. We were putting together a great team. We were having a lot of success. We made a great acquisition with Victus in 2017.

• 1:07:04Guy Raz?

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

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, if you're out there, we see this up and coming company. We were, every single piece of wood we could make was going on the field to a major league player, right? At the major league 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's doing a really good job. And so we built a relationship with them over some years, and we ended up acquiring them. And, you know, we could tell they were going to be the future in bats. And quickly, as we surpassed Louisville Slugger, I think in 2013, they surpassed Louisville Slugger in 2018 as the number two bat and-

• 1:07:48Guy Raz?

  Used by major league players, I should say.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Correct. And those, and those are the, those are the stats that people are like, whoa, you surpassed 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.

• 1:08:05Guy Raz?

  All right. And 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, maybe they did, I don't know. 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?

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think so. It's 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, I don't want to say conservative brand. Like, we show up, we kind of joked about, we'd show up and our shirts would be tucked in, we'd be wearing suits and the Victus guys would show up in a t-shirt and a hat on backwards. 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.

• 1:09:03Guy Raz?

  When did you start to make a decent salary? By 2014, I imagine you're actually making a pretty good salary.

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:09:52Guy Raz?

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

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 1:10:05Guy Raz?

  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.

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think some of it was in 2019, we decided that some of our shareholders had been in since 2009, right? Was no real return because we kept putting money back in the company. 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 roadshow with, with private equity and strategics and had a great outcome for all of our shareholders where everybody was, was super pleased and it was great for us as well.

• 1:10:52Guy Raz?

  And you stayed on as CEO.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  I did. They kept my entire team.

• 1:10:56Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

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

• 1:11:05Guy Raz?

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

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:18Guy Raz?

  In November of 2023, they then sell the, the holding company that they're 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 return in just three years.

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was an incredible run.

• 1:11:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:11:54Guy Raz?

  And they, Fox Factory makes like mountain bikes, right?

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  That's right. Shocks, trucks, bikes.

• 1:12:01Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

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

• 1:12:22Guy Raz?

  And you stayed on, again, part of that deal. You stayed on as, as CEO.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  I stayed on. They kept my entire team again, and they're investing in us and, and letting us go and it's been fun.

• 1:12:34Guy Raz?

  So let's talk about where this is heading now because from what I gather, you guys are, and, 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.

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  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 hitters 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 to grow our addressable market, right? Because we know baseball, you know what the size of baseball is. Softball 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 not just these products that are out there. We're just going to make them. There has to be a story with it and a technology.

• 1:13:33Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So what is, if I say, what is Marucci Sports today? And I never met you before. And I'm like, what is it? What do you guys sell? How do you describe the brand today?

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  You know, 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 now have our training facility. We have apparel. We're launching footwear at the end of this year. It's on field and training.

• 1:13:59Guy Raz?

  Like spikes, like cleats and stuff?

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 1:14:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah, because you're a pitcher. I mean, you could, I mean, is there a world where you make ball, you make baseballs?

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  We make baseballs now. So we pretty much make every product for a baseball player head to toe now.

• 1:14:11Guy Raz?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  Gloves, batting gloves, socks, you know, now footwear, hats. I mean, 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 of December this year, it'll be head to toe.

• 1:14:24Guy Raz?

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

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:31Guy Raz?

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

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Louisville Slugger.

• 1:14:49Guy Raz?

  So you guys are, Louisville Slugger's always been the official bat of the MLB. Next year, that'll be Marucci Bats.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  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. And of course Victus as well. Well, Marucci and Victus will both be official bats next year. So that's a, it's a huge opportunity for us. We don't take it lightly. And, you know, we want to bring that new cool factor to the game. Like, we like to change. We like, we like 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.

• 1:15:26Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:28Guy Raz?

  Kurt, when you think about where you got to here, we're talking about, again, if I met you in 2004, I'd be like, I don't know, man. Wooden bats, the market opportunity here is limited. You got to sell tens, a thousand of these things. I'd have been skeptical, but here you are. You're now heading up a brand that's doing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue a year. How much of where you got to now do you attribute to the work you put in? And how much do you think has to do with just getting lucky breaks?

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  Man, 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 doors open just from being here, but I definitely can say just being consistent and putting in the time has helped.

• 1:16:15Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  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 when I was addressing our whole team, it's the first time, not an emotional person, but it came out and as I was addressing the team that I broke down. I couldn't get it out. 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 I'd go to battle with these guys any day.

• 1:16:50Guy Raz?

  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 US 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.

• 1:17:32Guy Raz?

  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 Devon Schwartz with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Katherine Seifer. Our engineers were Maggie Luthar and Jimmy Keely. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, J.C. Howard, Carla Estevez, Sam Paulson, Chris Messini, Kerry Thompson, John Isabella, and Elaine Coats. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.