Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/2851c9a7c77db254

Yeah.
Yeah.
Two thousand twelve we were having a big coach's party.
And I remember our engineer saying, Hey, uh the NCAA just told me that they're gonna de certify our bats.
Mm.
They tested some bats.
And they said the bats in the field were testing higher than the limit.
that it was bouncing back too hard which meant that it would give a player an unfair advantage.
That's correct.
And I literally couldn't speak.
All of our bats in the market
we're gonna 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.
Wow.
And it was a it was a multi million dollar hit for a company that didn't have
Money.
Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements.
They built.
Guy Raz and on the show today how a bad shoulder injury turned a ball player into a businessman.
built Merucci Sports into one of the biggest brand on the baseball field.
Since eighteen eighty-four, 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 Merucci and its sister company, Victus.
So how did Merucci, a brand founded twenty years ago in Baton Rouge, Louisiana?
Come to knock Louisville Slugger off its perch?
Well, this is the story of a very risky business venture.
The story of a couple of injured professional baseball players who were looking for a career after baseball spit them out.
Now to step back a bit further, most professional athletes don't make enough money to live off for the rest of their lives. You only hear about the guys who sign multi-million dollar deals. The average of a career in Major League Baseball is less than three years.
The median salary is around a million and a half dollars a year.
That's a lot of cash, but after taxes, after paying your agent and lawyer.
Most guys are lucky if they have enough left to buy a house once their career is over. So it means a lot of former players get jobs on coaching staffs, at universities, or sometimes in professional leagues. This was probably Kurt Ainsworth's path.
Kurt was initially a stud. That is actually a term in baseball. A stud, a guy who is 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. And after three years of injuries, surgeries, rehab, and attempts to try and revive his career, Kurt was basically out of a job.
But by chance, he got reconnected with one of his old training coaches at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, a guy by the name of Jack Marucci.
And Jack, well, he had a hobby. He loved to carve his own wooden baseball bats.
And even though Kurt Ainsworth wasn't a particularly strong hitter, remember he was a pitcher. He saw a lot of potential in those Marucci bats. And eventually he convinced Jack Marucci to turn his hobby into a business.
And then a partnership.
For more than a decade after, Kurt and his third partner, Joe Lawrence, struggled.
They struggled because well
The wooden baseball bat market is pretty small, and it's highly regulated by baseball leagues across the country.
At times it wasn't clear that Merucci 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, Merucci Sports is a much, much bigger business and now a major player in baseball.
How they got there?
Well, that's our story for today.
Kurt Answorth 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 the smaller kids on the team.
I remember in Little League we had uh Will Clark came and spoke to our Little League one year and he said
One of you in the crowd.
is gonna play in the major leagues. Oh wow.
And Will Clark was on the Giants, I I believe. He was a He was. He was. And he's from New Orleans, Louisiana. So I always woke up every morning, checked the box score to see how Will Clark did.
Uh, he was always my hero as a kid. And I literally felt he was
Talking to me that day.
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 want to be a major league baseball player. And uh you know, all the teachers would kinda laugh at me and say, Nah, nobody really gets to do that.
And again.
I was small on my team. It's really hard, but I always believed I could do it.
Yeah, yeah, and and obviously we're we're gonna get there.
Um, and you grew in I mean, into a really serious ball player. I mean, I think by by the time you were a senior in high school you were pitching uh
Like h how fast were you pitching at the time? I think my mechanics were a little messed up, but I was probably somewhere in the I would say eighty two to eighty seven or eighty eight range. So I was
Okay for a high school player.
Yeah, and and I we should mention I should mention that like today
If you're a a a player in college and you're hitting you're you're reaching in the upper nineties
uh even if your pitches are not accurate, like there's a good chance that you will be
drafted into the into the majors.'Cause once you're over ninety seven, ninety eight
Into the hundreds.
Right, it's next level.
Yeah, I think when I was coming out when you were hitting ninety.
You were probably a top prospect.
You know, the obviously the speeds have changed along the along the way, and now it seems like you turn on the TV and most guys are throwing ninety five to a hundred. It really is amazing to see these guys throw. Yeah, it's it's totally crazy. Um I know for college, um you you wound up playing for L S U, your local
University of Louisiana State.
Uh which it's one of those schools that I just
it it uh is very good at baseball. Like some of I think some of the greatest players, like Alex Bregman,
uh the pitcher Aranola, DJ LeMayhu, I mean lots of amazing
um incredible like r roster of players who went through that program.
Um
But from what I understand, like in your case, you weren't actually recruited by L S U, right? Like you were a walk on. You and and you started training with the team your freshman year, right?
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 summerball and in my first game in summerball I ended up throwing a f a full game, a complete game, no hitter, but blew out my elbow.
Wait.
In that game you threw a no hitter, which is and you blew out your elbow. Were you throwing that ball i in in severe pain?
Extraordinary pain.
And I had some teammates on the team that are like, Man, come on, you gotta suck it up. You gotta go. You're you're you know, you're throwing well. We need you to pitch for L shoot 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 uh
Wow. So you were just d damaging it more and more
and more over the course of those those like three hours.
Uh, but then eventually I think you got surgery to f to fix that injury and it it was I guess a torn ligament in your elbow.
That's right.
And then you come back to the team in in nineteen ninety-nine, you have this incredible season, like a hundred and fifty seven strikeouts and a hundred and thirty innings, you had like
And you start to get scouts coming to look at you play, right? Yeah, it was uh 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 kinda crazy going into that last year at L Shu. And then, you know, throughout that season was kind of a whirlwind, uh, all the way through, you know, the regionals and super regionals until the draft.
Yeah.
And and I think
not that long after the the the season ended, you guys won a a title, a regional title.
You were drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the first round.
Uh that's correct. You know, when the Giants came up and selected me with the twenty fourth pick, it was just uh it was a special moment they'll always remember for sure. I can't imagine. Yeah. I mean it must have been incredible.
It was. So you get drafted. Now, this is the thing about baseball is
And it's it w it's different it's even different back then than it is now. You get drafted, you get a signing bonus, so uh they give you some money. Um 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 uh first of all, was it significant money or was it I mean w w what uh did you make a bunch of money on that side by by signing with the Giants?
Yeah, it was a it was a it was a it was nice, right? It was a good one a one point three million dollar start um at twenty years old. Wow. So that's amazing. So you you get this opportunity. Yeah, and you go uh and we'll t I want to talk about m about money and 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 um which ha is a very common story.
You go uh to
Play for the Giants and I think
Roughly two years.
After you were drafted.
You
make your debut, your major league debut for the San Francisco Giants, which is again
That's really fast. I mean you didn't you were not in the minor leagues for very long.
No, I wasn't. I I moved up very fast. I had some
Really good chances, some opportunities early. You know, I put so much pressure on myself. I'm be honest with you, I didn't really enjoy it along the way.
And I mean
I think that first season you you pitched like five or six games, right? Yeah, it was just the in the bullpen that first year in September.
And then you had a good season two thousand two.
Yeah.
Two thousand three.
Yeah.
I mean you got eleven starts, I mean you're you're you're doing well and
Then
Like right when the sea like right when it's
Summertime.
peak of baseball early summer.
You get injured.
Your shoulder.
Yeah.
This time was different.
Yeah.
Then they finally figured out
after my eleventh start that I had a broken shoulder blade. And uh
It was tough.
And uh 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.
Um
That year.
Right. And so you are sent to the Orioles and that's business. That's that's baseball.
Like one day you're wearing one uniform and the next day
You are halfway across the country wearing y another uniform.
Yeah. And so
Dave Righetti was our pitching coach the time comes and gets me out of the dugout, and uh 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
Um
And basically I was like, Can I go tell my teammates bye? He said, No, you gotta go change. Take your jersey off. There's a car waiting for you and you're flying to Baltimore. Wow, you can't even say goodbye to your teammates? So
That one that one hurt.
Wow.
Clear out your don't even clear out your desk.
It's so crazy.
Yeah.
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
Having a last drink. Why don't they do that?
It could be different now. Uh and it that was just kind of back then and the Wrigley filled tunnels. I mean, I think we walked a half a mile to get to our locker room at this point. I mean, you were in Chicago when that happened? Yeah, we were in Chicago on a road trip. Then I was like, Well, I'm gonna show them. I'm gonna go to Baltimore and really be the picture that they didn't realize they had. Wow. All right, so you get to Baltimore. Yep.
And uh but injured. You're not gonna play, so you've gotta br you're on the team, but you gotta rehab. And I guess
You decided to or you had an opportunity
to go back to Louisiana for some time.
During that season.
Yeah, it was uh in two thousand four.
So I reached out to the Orioles and said, Would you let me go home to Baton Rouge, you know, Jack Marucci's the head trainer at L Shu, will you let me go home and Jack will write my reports and do my rehab? And the Orioles said yes.
I was like, Whoa, so I had to cold call Jack Merucci and say, Jack, you probably don't know who I am. You're the football trainer. I played baseball now. 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 Merucci started. Right.
So I mean he he's a really cutting edge trainer and always has been. So I was like, Hey, I wanna go back and and do my rehab there.
And when you were back in Louisiana
You know, uh first of all, you're the guy who made the major. So so people are like, dude, what are you doing here, right? You would see people
Yeah and and it will probably
probably kinda yet to explain what's going on and and and I don't know probably probably wasn't a great time.
Yeah, it's that'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 it's just not the same.
It's just not.
Yeah.
It was super frustrating to me'cause I worked so hard.
And I think that's the one thing that bothered me the harder I worked in baseball.
The more injuries I had. You can only throw so much. You can only run and lift so much. And that was always it really hurt me, you know, psychologically a lot. Just couldn't stay healthy.
Yeah.
All right, so you're back in Baton Rouge.
And there's another guy that another f
player, former baseball player named Joe Lawrence that is also
Uh uh help me understand the story. He was a he was also a form he was a former major league player

left baseball and went back to college.
And was playing
college football as a twenty seven 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 Merucci.
Yeah, what a crazy story. Yeah.
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 year as as I did in nineteen nineteen ninety six. But So you knew who he was?
Oh yeah. And his his best friend at the time was my roommate at L Shu. So Joe and I developed a a relationship when I was playing at L Shu. So when I had a chance to come back.
He's rehabbing his knee.
I'm rehabbing my shoulder.
And Jack's our trainer.
I mean here's where I think your story really takes off because
Jack Maruchi.
Who is
doing your rehab, he who's like kind of overseeing it.
He also happens to have this hobby which is
making his own wooden baseball bat, right?
Yeah.
He he was always tinkering with wood.
Um you know, he tried to
would make bats for his son in the neighborhood. His son's name was Gino in town and he had called Louville Sluger 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 bad 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'em into the locker room for Joe to look at'cause he was a hitter. I was a pitcher. Right.
And Joe and I love baseball, so we like
to look at the bats and and talk about bats, and that's really where all these conversations started.
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 and anyone knows about Little League, especially at that time.
Very unusual for Little League Claire to use a wooden bat, they use aluminum bats.
In Little League.
You know, he
He studied the industry.
And started making some pretty good bats. And it just how the stars aligned is you know, his house is too
two streets away from mine at the time in Baton Rouge. And so Jack was just kinda whittling in his back yard. He had a woofle ball uh field in his backyard for kids to go play. And really when
Joe and I started seeing some of these bats, we're like, man.
Your knees not rehabbing very well. It's not coming back. My shoulder's not coming back very well.

Let's think about what are we gonna do now that our careers are are coming to an end. Like we're gonna keep trying to play, but if they come to an end, what are we gonna do?
So all right.
Jack Marucci
І знай бізнес, і є з чан.
Making
Baseball bats, but because he's the trainer LSU also has access to.
A lot of potentially a lot of pros. Yeah, correct. Yeah, and Jack 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. He was on the Orioles. The Reds. Reds at the time.
And so he literally went there to bring him a bat, just thinking he would take some batting practice with it. And next thing you know, Eduardo Perez used it in the game, in a major league game.
And it was just a no name bat. It was just a bat that was Yeah. He had a logo on it. He did, okay.
Yeah. They put a Marucci logo on it. So he had kinda created this on his own computer in his back yard, put some
you know, sticker on it, Maruchi Bad Company. Uh so it was amazing. He had Edward use it.
Uh and then believe it or not
Barry Larkin used it, Hall of Famer, and got a hit.
Well.
And then Mike Cameron used it and hit a home run. What what was so special about his bats? I mean, they're wooden bats. They're
There are other companies that made and make wooden bats. So what made those bats
Good. I mean why did you think they were
Yeah, what would make them better in your view. 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.
We're sending out
you know, twelve bats to a player when they'd order order a dozen players and only
three or four of them would be good enough to use in a game.
Only three or four out of the dozen bats, why is that?
Yeah, so when you go it was just commonplace to use 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 save 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 bad company where every player in the major leagues get the best wood.
You know, I've it's it's just interesting because a wooden bat
Is
I mean, first of all, most people
who play baseball, that they don't swing them. They if you play youth baseball you've only used an aluminum bat.
And a wooden bat just feels so different. It's like
There's a weight to it, right? And so it's
it really is very specific to the player, right? Like
Different players.
connect with a bat and and and even if it's the same brand on it, the different bats in different ways.
We we'd like to say it would best 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.
So all right. When you
You go to Jack, Maruchi.
You and Joe go to him and you say, Hey.
We want to turn this bad thing you're doing into a business.
And what was his initial reaction?
Uh no, we can't do that. There's no money in this. Uh
you know, we're not gonna make any money doing this. Uh this is just, you know, kind of his hobby.
And and Joe and I really said
No, hey, we want to do this.
Uh we we want to push this along.
So at the time.
Who were the I mean, what companies were
making bats is uh there's uh Louisville Slugger, I I mean I remember Easton as a kid and like there's already established brands
Doing this, right? Is that uh was that the case?
Of course, yeah. L Lovel Slugger.
I mean that was the the crown jewel in the space.
Uh pretty much own the market.
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?
Yeah, I mean rightfully so. He should have been skeptical, right? The wood bat market at that time was small, it was tough, and it did take us a long time to do it. But we told him that hey, we're committed to this.
We're gonna build a shed in my backyard. We're gonna put in equipment. Joey and I are gonna work this and sell it during the day.
And
we can do something with it. So Joe and I were willing to go sign our houses. We were willing to go mortgage our houses on all the equipment we brought into our house. And he he finally did agree to it and trusted us. We built a great relationship.
And
People probably assume
Even when you're back in Louisiana.
doing rehab that you got all this cash'cause you are the majors, right? Yeah.
Yeah, and look I I
We had some money from the the sign and bonus for sure, but it was like at some point you're just gonna continue to dip through that
Yeah. So savings. Right. So you know, day to day money coming in was was not matching what my spin was going out.
Huh.
Alright, this is September two thousand four. You guys start the Maruchi Bad Company and how did you
Again, you're very smart guy, good student in in high school.
but you do not know anything about business at this point, right?
Um you'd come from a family of entrepreneurs, so which is uh you know, very common. And so
What did you how did you first of all how did you guys split this business up?
Yeah, so we just split it up in thirds to begin with.
Makes sense, yep.
And our lawyer left that meeting saying, Man, I hope my friends didn't just lose all their money in a bad company. Right. So it 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 gonna go with it. Is it just gonna be major league alone? Are we gonna run camps, clinics, teams?
Um but I tell you what we did commit to is making the best bats in the world and getting learning everything about the wood business.
Okay, this is the fall of 2004, you're still rehabilitating hoping to come back for the 2005.
Still an Oriol at that time.
Um and went back into spring training that next year and you know, kinda Joe held down the business in Baton Rouge while I was there and we had a lot of really good players on the Orioles that year and I was bringing in bats.
So I have to assume that that Jack, who knew how to make the bats,
was the guy who had to make the bats or or or was he teaching you guys how to like
Use
You know, table saws and
And and lathing machines and stuff, or did you just naturally have that ability? Like how how how was that working?
Well,
First things first, you know, there was no real playbook to do it. So when we ordered the equipment, it all showed up at my house. I had built a shed in the backyard. Wow.
We had a big C and C lathe, we had engraving machines, we had sanding machines. I mean, we went all out on equipment.
How how much money do you think it costs to get all this equipment in your
But ha to buy it all.
Uh, we were several hundred thousand dollars deep in equipment. Wow.
To make baseball bats. Yeah. Our neighbors thought we were kind of crazy, but they would come over and watch. And what was crazy is that, you know, Jack after he'd be at football all day. Then Jack would come over at night and cut bats late into the night on the lathe. And then Joe and I, during the day, we would sand bats.
stain bats, paint bats, engrave them, and ship them off to customers. We were kind of the sales operations. We actually made all the bats during the day and Jack would cut at night.
Wow.
How how long would it take to make one bat?
Who back then, I think it was probably a couple of minutes to cut it.
But then you got a you know, a couple of minutes to sand it. Then you gotta stain it, let it dry, you know, and then they engrave it. So I mean it it took
Quite a bit of time. We weren't doing very many bats a day, I can tell you back then.
I've read that
P that people have u use cow femurs, the femur of a cow
To smooth a bed surface. Can you explain why you need a cow femur?
Like a giant piece of bone, by the way.
Yeah, we used to bone every bat. And we it used to be in our logo until uh you know, we had to take it off'cause it was an extra logo, they said, at M L Ba 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 cal femur. Wow, and a cow femur is better than like a steel rod? Uh no, I think it was probably it was kinda bringing back the old school days. I gotcha. As we've
gone on, we've used other products that that are not cal femur. We started with the calfemur.
I got it. It's it's a better story than a st than using you know m modern technology.
Um all right, so so you guys are doing this through the winter and then you go back for spring training. Back to So you're gonna go to Florida.
Go back and work out with the guys.
the Orioles hoping to to
obviously make the roster, right? Yeah.
And um
You w you come with a bunch of bats and with the intention of handing them out to your to your teammates?
Yeah, it was uh you know, basically you would take a model they liked
You would copy it, make it in R Wood, R finish, send it back to him and
the players really started liking the bats.
So, all right, how much was a bat? Like a hundred bucks?
Back then it was probably more like sixty five dollars. 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 sixty five dollars when we started.
And and at that time, this is two thousand five now, spring training two thousand five.
Again, like
you could probably still get away with it and not have to get like a
'Cause the M the uh M N FL, MLB, they're so obsessive over anybody
being involved in those leagues without approval or paying licensing fees or whatever. So
you could kinda get away with it at that time, like players could just use it in spring training.
We we got license that year.
You got a license from the M L B. Okay, so once you got the approval, then then it was okay to use it in in major league baseball. Okay. And and in terms of like weight, for example, because you said that you would you you were on the Orioles, right? And uh you'd ask players, hey, you want to try this bat?
You would take their bats that they liked and then send them back and you would try to match the weight and everything. But there has to be like a range, right? Like a bat can't be oh heavier than this and and lighter than this, right? Yeah, there's a lot of regulations and it's changed over the year with MLB. And you know, we adapt to those changes, but you know, certain players want certain things.
Uh and you gotta work with them to give'em what they want. And yeah, of course, over the years it's we're a little bit more uh sophisticated than we were back then. But the biggest thing for us is consistency. Makes sense. Yep. And it's just the three of us. We
weighed our bats down to the tenth of an ounce, which we still do to this day, and we wanted to be perfect. So when a player would order twelve 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 o order from small bat companies. We order twelve, you send us two or three bats. We're like, Well, hold on.
We could send you twelve, but all we had good wood for was two or three.
And the the other s you know, the phone would go silent and they go
What?
Yeah, we could send you twelve but
You know, we only had that good wood, so I think players realized when they got our bats at the beginning.
Every bet was perfect.
You given that your bats were better, I have to assume that you were throwing away a lot of wood. Yeah.
Like you would get wood in.
And it would just not be good enough, so you just had to eat it. You couldn't use it.
Yeah, that's a another lesson we learned early. Um, I think we start looking at our numbers, it's less than ten percent of our wood, more like seven percent probably goes to a pro player.
Well what do you do with the other ninety three percent? 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 it, each piece of wood, let's just call it a twenty dollar bill. It was a lot of twenty dollar bills laying around and w it it made for some uncomfortable conversations when you would miscut a bat or mis sand a bat or misprint a bat. You're like, ooh, you just wasted a really good piece of wood.
So what would you do with the wood that you're not gonna uh'cause if it had to be perfect for the pro professional players, you just like turn it into sawdust, or what'd you do with it?
No, we would do a lot of souvenir bats.
We did a lot of graduation bats, birth bats, uh high school senior bats, and then the truth of it is, is that you know, Joe and I would
Would take off with one of our other employees, our first employee, who's still here to this day, you know, Brett 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 older men up to like sixty-five, 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.
Alright, so
Also from what I
Gathering.
Pretty soon after you guys started this business.
You shifted from Ashwood.
to Maplewood.
Why does that matter?
Why is Maple
Better than Ash. Yeah, that 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. Uh you know, Barry Bonds made maple.
Popular.
He came in and started hitting with maple and he was h you know, hitting all his home runs and then maple became more and more popular and people looked into it.
And maple's just a harder wood.
Um 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 gonna bend the nail.
And you show a hitter that and they're like, Why wouldn't you use a harder
That and so players started going to Maple really quickly, uh over ash and then the emerald ash
beetle, the ash borer beetle came in and kinda wiped out most of the ash in in the in the United States. So then it really forced everybody
into maple and we had a really big head start on the maple side. So that allowed us to gain market share pretty quickly.
Okay, let's go back to spring training two thousand five.
with the Oreos. You guys get the M L B to uh get licensed by the M L B so they're le they're legal
You are handing them out to players. Any by the way, any
Um'cause I would think that if you get in the hands of a star player
That's a bigger deal. Were you able to get into the hands of any players who were particularly visible?
Yeah, sure, with some Hall of Famers on that team and and some superstars, right? I mean, well, Sammy Sosa, Raphael Palmero, Brian Roberts. Wow. But yeah, to have those guys use it and validate the product.
I think
That is when we knew we were on to something.
Were you
D I mean at that time
Did you have to
pay players to agree to just test out your batch or was it kinda 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 I'm not gonna use your product until I get a c like it's
Totally different world.
Uh for the worst, I think. But back then could you just been like, Hey, Rafael Palmer Palmero, like use my bat and he'd be like, Sure. Yeah. It was even better than that for us. You know, we've never paid a player to swing a bat. And a lot of that was because we just couldn't afford to pay players, I'm 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.
So all they have to do is t go to the clubhouse guy, like their quartermaster, and say, Hey, I like this bat, can you order a few of these? That's that's correct.
And that's, you know, just kinda passed around from there and really helped us grow that brand.
And by the way
I I I should we should have I should have asked you this.
You called it Merucci Bad Company'cause it was'cause Jack was making them.
Um, and that was the only reason. You just thought it sounded cool. Yeah, it sounded better than Ainsworth Bat Company or Lawrence Bat Company. It has that designer feel to it. And I think that was probably our first really good decision we made is just keeping it as Merucci Bat Company. It just has that Italian
High high end feel to it.
Prada Gucci.
Ferrari. Yeah.
Yeah, and I think Joe and I were kinda at that point in time, we were thinking you could put it on anything and it would kinda 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.
Alright, you st start spring training.
And
Once again.
Season ends early. You
re aggravate that injury that you had in your shoulder. So again, that season's done.
I'm curious, does your salary get affected when you when you can't play or it's just the contract they gotta pay you no matter what, it's pay or play.
Yeah, it depends on where you are. So if you're in the major if you're in the major leagues, you g you'll get your major league pay. If you're in the minor leagues, you get your minor league pay. And I had already been sent down that year, you know, I think at that point to to not get the full major league pay. So and I and I had two kids at that point.
When I got home.
Uh so yeah, it was two kids, not having a salary coming home, working for a company for free. It was it was definitely challenging times.
Well 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.
Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2005, and with his partners, Kurt Ainsworth is growing Meruchi bats.
and hoping he can get back to pitching with the Orioles, despite a bad shoulder injury.
But
That year?
The team lets him go.
Yeah, I mean when the season ended, I was basically released.
Yeah, I was I was no longer under a contract, no team control. So I was a free agent.
And so I was
I had no pay coming in and I was trying out for teams. Then
you know, started working out for teams that you know that
really that off season November, December throw in and then hopefully to get signed to go to spring training one more time to give it a run.
So
Meantime, you guys are focused on the bats, on selling the bats, and 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'em for sixty-five to eighty dollars.
You're not doing
Serious revenue at this point.
No, we weren't doing and special yet.
You have three partners.
And you also have employees there every day.
To do what? So we're we're paying we're paying guys to help us sand bats, paint bats, you know, engrave bats, ship bats at that time.
Um you know we need we had help. So we were paying them and not ourselves. So anything we were making.
was going right back into the business to pay the employees and to buy more inventory because wood was expensive.
So
You're a free agent and you're trying out for a bunch of teams and you get signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Yes.
Ін Лос Анджелес
Two thousand six you go to uh you get signed, you go to spring training
And uh and there, once again.
You're able to do what you did.
with the Orioles. You're able to bring bats and

Uh did and did you have some success there again?
We did. And w and this was an upgraded bat.
Our finishes got better that year.
uh with you know Jose Cruz Jr. and some of the other players started really gravitating toward the bats and really started buying into the company. Yeah. And now I'm in the national league, so I was hitting.
So I really had better bats than our hitters and it it became uh 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 s 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.
Um and I knew it was coming. So uh 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 him. 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. So they flew me to

And they did MRIs again and the doctor said
Man.
Sure.
the uh labrum rotator coat 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, in one thing it made me feel good that I knew something was really wrong. But in the other thing is I knew my career was over that day.
So even before spring training ends, you're done.
Two thousand six.
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 while my arm's in a sling. So I mean, we've had some crazy things happen along the way.
Wait, how was that baby delivered?
Uh in the front seat of our Tahoe.
And I 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 an ambulance, ambulance drives around and helps deliver the baby in the front seat of our car on the way to the hospital.
My God. She's a trooper. All right. So so
You're
Done.
Yeah.
You're like twenty eight, you're done with baseball. And um
Did it feel cathartic? Did it feel like okay?
Now I'm just gonna give this dream up and now focus or did it feel
Were you sad about it?
I was sad probably for a minute that day when the doctor told me how bad the surgery was, and then it was almost relieved.
I was tired of rehabbing injuries, and it was one of those things where
Uh uh.
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 Meruchi, 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.
Alright, so you
You're out of baseball.
And you've got no salary.
you're you have no salary, you've got three children, and you've put all of your money into the into the equipment for this baseball business, which
is far from profitable.
Right.
So what are you gonna do to make money?
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 Ruchi, couldn't afford to. So uh Joe and I got together.
And we started another business in Baton Rouge called the Big Leagues of Baton Rouge. The Leagues of Baton Rouge.
Correct, and it was a baseball batting cages and training facility.
And we we opened that in two thousand in the summer really of two thousand six.
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 given lessons. This makes sense, right? Because you guys had expertise. You start a
Uh

Any professional or college player, maybe even high school players? High school and youth mainly.
So
Joe and I would show up at six thirty in the morning and work for Maruchi from six thirty to two thirty.
We would kinda change into our PE uniforms, we called it, and then we would go do lessons till nine PM.
Monday through Friday.
And then lessons on Sunday, twelve to six, and we were booked out for several months at a time. We were doing two hundred and I think two hundred and twenty private lessons each a month. Wow.
So you were basically working
Like
Twelve, fifteen hour days.
Yeah, it was it was a lot. And I you know, I had three young kids at the time.
And uh you know, we did that for eighteen months and I feel like I was raising other people's kids. You know, my kids were coming up there and they loved it. They were young at the time and uh but it got to the point where it's just too much. And at that point Merichi started taking off and and doing better. So we sold that business. The bat and is it still around? The big leagues, the baton rouge?
No, uh crazy stories we actually kinda bought it back down the road and it's uh hitters house now. It's it's that's that same location where we are is our Meruchi 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 Lee's batonouche.
All right, so eighteen months in you sell it.
And uh and'cause by this point you say you guys
I mean you you in your words
Maruchi bat companies taking off. And from what I understand, this is two thousand eight.
You guys are selling fifteen thousand bats a year at this point.
Yeah.
So it's about I'm I'm thinking a little over a million dollars in revenue.
Probably.
B but you guys were now able to start to take a salary from from that?
From the sales.
Yeah, I mean
That salary would have been really small.
Right.
We had made enough money in big leagues at 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 Marouji Sports is w was where we then focused all of our attention. Okay.
And and
Jack Marucci.
Mm-hmm.
still a third owner of the business, he would pop in from time to time or what? I mean, w w how was he
He wasn't making the bats at this point.
No, he he was more of a he would talk to the clubhouse managers and some of the players would call him and then he would s he would send in bad orders from his phone. But you know, he was he wasn't really coming to the
But he had good connections and he was able to
To use those connections, yeah.
He did.
Okay. Um
So
This is something that's interesting to me'cause in two thousand eight
Um
I guess you guys had been make had been using a wood mill.
Right, this is where you're getting your wood from.
And what they were shipping you this is a wood mill in Pennsylvania. They were just shipping you pallets of wood to Baton Rouge?

Yeah.
companies were buying from them as well.
Up at this point in time. And it was an Amish run mill that we would get the best wood from.
And I guess you get tipped off and
June of two thousand eight, that somebody
Some other bad company is looking to buy them. Was it was when you say some other bad company, I'm just thinking there's just one big one. Was it that one big one?
Yes.
At that point in time that's what we were told. Uh that the big one was was looking at that point. But you were d but do you think do you think Louisville Slugger had noticed you guys at this point?
They did at that point. When we started having Albert Poohs and some of those guys w winning MVPs, uh 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 uh our competitor was there trying to buy it.
Joe and I actually got on a plane against our lawyer's advice.
Brought a document with us.

Um and we knew there was risk.
And but but how so you want to acquire this company
You're thinking we gotta acquire this to keep the

But how are you gonna do that? I mean you your your revenue's low, you've already already
Over leveraged.

But a few years earlier.
So how are you gonna buy that that mill?
We we actually took on another investor and bought it outside of Maruchi.
You oh you created a n separate company to buy this mill. We did. We did and took on another investor and and bought it under a different LLC name. 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 i it it's automatically there's gonna be revenue coming into that business.
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 Ruchi bat company alone, just small investors, to help us pay for some of that. How how much did it cost to buy the mill? I'm just curious, how much does it cost to do that?
Um at that point in time I think we were somewhere just under uh half a million dollars for the whole mill. Oh, it was only ha I shouldn't say only, but half a million dollars to buy the mill.
Yeah.
That seems like a pretty good deal.
It turned out to be a great deal.
Yeah.
And we we kept the team, we kept the family involved. Yeah. Um you know, we we we
covered a lot of debt that they obviously had.
at that time. So we ended up paying a lot more than a half a million when you end up
Adding in all the other stuff we paid. Yeah.
You were okay, so you now got the mill
Um and you've gotta but you cannot grow this business just by selling wooden bats to professional players, because there's a that's a limited market. I mean that can't be more than a
Ten million dollar market opportunity, maybe.
So to really turn this into something you knew.
That you had to
Invest in the business to grow it further.
What was the first thing you you you guys started to talk about?'Cause
It seems to me like the opportunity is with like
Kids playing in little leagues and
grown men playing in their fun softball leagues, whatever it might be, like that to me seems like where the
The market opportunity would be.
Yeah, youth baseball, right? And that's aluminum bats. So that was our next focus is we wanted to
Come out with an aluminum bat.
And the aluminum bat was designed for high school and college players.
Yeah. And so this is a hu this is a like you're gonna
quintuple your potential market, right? There's tons of college teams and there's rec teams and there's high school teams. So
Uh, and probably aluminum bats you could sell for more than a wooden bat, right?
Yeah, the bats it was you know, you can manufacture'em easier.
uh you could mass produce some it was higher margins and it was a bigger addressable market, right? That's kind of the big buzzword that we learned along the way. The total addressable market of wood, as you've highlighted, is very small.
Right, right. But but in order to make
Aluminum backs, I mean, you guys were gonna need an infusion of cash, right? Like capital. You you this I I think this is where you got introduced to this
um this p new potential investor, a guy named Reed Dickens
Who would eventually become your CEO, right?
That's right.
And I guess from from what I've read, Reed um had been working in politics and and he he wanted to get back into business. Um
So I mean the timing probably
Was good, right?
Yeah. And so Reed cold called us and I can tell you he said, Look, let me come down there and meet with with you and Joe. And Reed came down, he said, look if we
create this other separate L C under Maruchi Sports.
I can raise the money that we need.
And we can create this other brand and go do aluminum bats.
He kinda laid out a vision that we had never
Seen before.
It just said look, I think this company could be the number one bat
In the game.
And Joe and I kinda looked at each other like, Hold on, man. You got Louisville Slugger's been here, you know, a hundred and twenty years or whatever. Like, don't get carried away. And he said, I 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.
So all right, so Reed comes in with all these ideas and says
Let's start.
A separate company. We'll call it Maruchi Sports. A hundred percent.
And he brings in some outside capital, um, and I guess there's what it's like two, two and a half million dollars that that he helps raise
That's right. Some of it was players, but some of it was, you know, kind of uh I would say family office or just, you know.
Yeah, wealthier people.
They're using the bats, so it's it's a double win, right? They're gonna put in money and they're gonna use the bats.
Yeah. Well what we didn't realize is that when you're successful you actually need more money than when you're not successful. Yeah. And we needed to go raise
More capital fairly quickly.
after he joined and was the CEO and we were running because we were actually having some pretty good success early.
Uh and we needed more capital. Who are some of the players that that got involved early on in that in that early race?
Albert Poohs.
Uh was a was an early one, of course. Um Ryan Vogel song, the next giant at that time. You know, Sean Casey, Harold Reynolds
You know, we've had so uh David Ortiz, Jose Bautista. I mean it was kind of a
A who's who of players Will Clark my ch my childhood idol.
uh was in there. So we had a really good group of guys that we started going to uh to raise that next round of capital. Um and that's what really brought us to acquiring Merchie 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?
Okay, so because
In order to y to put the Marucci
Logo.
On
Maruchi sports products. You had to pay the Marucci Bat Company, which you were a third owner of. Yeah.
to license the name because it's Jack Marucci's name.
So ultimately
That had to be untangled.
Yeah, and that's what happened in two thousand eleven is w we negotiated uh with Maruchi Sports and Maruchi Bad Company to
acquire Merchie Bad Company, become one company.
And so
Um
I mean Jack Marucci probably, you know, uh he had to agree you and Joe and Jack Marucci jown a 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
mm be paid a license fee or or get some equity in the new business or sell his shares.
Yeah. And I think there was a little bit of all of that. I think we all kind of rolled some of that. We took some cash off the table.
Yeah, look, we had great relationships with Jack. I think he respected what we were doing and what we were trying to do. I think he could finally see that there was some other opportunities out there. You know.
He'd always kinda joked that all I want to do is pay for my kids' school.
And if and I'd be happy. Uh obviously we paid a little bit more than the kids' school, but
He trusted us to go build something.
Uh with the with the name that we created together.
Right.
and you start to produce an aluminum bat. And I think the g and and it's available in the consumer
Market.
in early two thousand ten. So how did you get
Anybody to
Even care. I mean, yes some cum some kids probably knew about the Maruchi wooden bats.
They did.
I think locally we probably did okay early in two thousand nine. We would go out to those tournaments that we would and we would bring bats on the mobile tour and we would go bring bats out on the road and show people and let'em hit with it. And I would say two thousand nine we did
pretty well in the first year.
But then when the NCAA changed the regulations to BB Corps which is a just uh
Basically a rule change that that made the bass perform more woodlike.
Everything changed.
Can we just unpack this for a little because this is really complicated. It is. BB Core is a certification, right? Uh it stands for battle
batted ball coefficient of restitution.
And it's a safety performance testing and standard. And and
The first year
You had these bats come out.
They were ready to go. They had they had complied with this new standard.
That's right.
And and you guys were th one of the few
batting you know, bat companies that had this ready to go because as they ch as the N C double A changed the certification, you guys could
create the bat to that certification.
But the second year, two tauseleven.
So the first year is great.
But then you were de certified in two thousand eleven.
Why? What was wrong with the bat?
So they
They tested some bats and they said the bats in the field were testing higher than the limit.
What does higher than limit mean?
They send it to a lab in Washington State and they shoot a ball off a stationary bat and it measures the rebound.
I see.
And so they measure it every, you know, every inch along the barrel, and they had sent us reports back and said that our bat had failed. That it was bouncing back too hard, which meant that it would give a player an unfair advantage. That's that's correct. I see, okay.
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? Huh. So in two thousand twelve, we were having a big coach's party.
And I remember our engineer walking myself and our CEO at the time.
uh outside and saying, Hey, uh the N CAA just told me that they're gonna decertify our bats.
And I literally couldn't speak.
Wait a minute, what does that mean? We just bought Meruchi Bad Company. We just took on these shareholders.
All of our bats in the market.
we're gonna 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.
Uh everything we had done to get to this point.
Was over.
Because I just didn't understand what was going on and how they could decertify it. How much money did that cost you?'Cause you made all this product and now it's
I guess you could sell it to high school players.
No, it was taken off from the high school too. So when they decertified it, it was totally decertified. So we had
Vessels coming over from Asia.
With all decertified bats on them. What did you do with them?
Melt them down? Like what do you did.
We uh we actually
took them to a scrap yard and recycled them. There was nothing else we could do with them. And it was a it was a multi million dollar hit for a company that didn't have
Money.
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 N C double A basket, but on the other hand they had to be.
Yeah.
They you have no choice'cause that's where the market was. So it like the obstacle
Was the

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?
We didn't, yeah. Right. Because we didn't change anything. We we sent a bad in, it passed. We didn't change anything in our production, and next thing you know, we're getting decertification.
notices like, Oh my gosh, what is going on? And again, you find out down the road, obviously, that we were taking so much market share that, you know, our competitors were sending our bats in, uh to the test lab and trying to say that our bats were over the limit. Um and look, that's
Mm
That was a learn for us because at that point in time we then took bats from them the field, sent them to the lab and they they were all over the limit, but nobody else was decertified but us. And so that was you talk about frustration. Uh that was a that was a tough learning.
Uh lesson right there in two thousand twelve. Was any part of you like
Conspiratorial's not the right word,'cause I don't think that's the right word, but any part of you suspicious that
You guys were decertified because the the bats were doing so well and the and there were maybe more influential competitors who were trying to

Shut you down.
Yeah, there's no question. We've had conversations with some of those other uh companies across the over the years and they said we could take some some hits from some smaller companies, but what you guys did, y'all were taking so much market share, you know, we we kinda had to slow you down.
Oh wow.
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.

But at that point in time.
That was the end.
When we come back in just a moment.
How Maruchi Sports recovers from the great aluminum bat meltdown.
of twenty twelve.
Stay with us.
I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.
Hey, welcome back to how I built this.
I'm Guy Raj.
So it's 2014, and Maruchi Sports is reeling from having its bats de-certified.
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,
A kind of
Underpowered.
Yeah, I think we overcorrected, right? We came out with bats that were so far under the limit that didn't perform very well.
You weren't hit they weren't hitting as well. A hundred percent.
We put some subpar product out there just to make sure we were under the limit.
And
We had great sell in, but we didn't have good sell through.
Mm. They weren't selling the kids. The kids weren't excited about the bats. And so we had to do something. Yeah.
And then as soon as that happened, I was named
CEO, I guess I would say early and uh
twenty fourteen. Uh 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

lost all this money so you lost the money on the decertification. Yeah. Then you flood the market with with bats that were not as w as good.
Yeah.
Salvage this thing.
But that's another financial hit.
That's correct.
So you just melted those bats down again that you took back?
We did.
We we we did and and I will say our our board that was the first time we had a board.
is an independent board of some really high
profile and quality board members.
Uh and
It was pretty shocking for them for my first move to to take those bats back, but they stuck with me and they trusted me through this whole process. My first year was not very good.
Um, and I brought in a C a CFO that year that I said, Hey man, sorry, this right after we hired you, uh, we're gonna take these bats back. So our number one customer and all our sales, we're gonna take these bat, but I I promise you it'll be the right move moving forward. And I do think they thought I was crazy at the beginning, but it ended up being one probably the best decision we've ever made.
Alright, so now you're retooling the bats to make them
the at the standards and quality that that that you had come to be known
Among players.
How long did it take now? You're you're tw twenty fourteen, you're the CEO, how long did it take before you start to claw back?
'Cause I'm still imagine it's gonna take a while for you guys to get profitability.
And to recover from you know what happened the previous two years.
Yeah, I I twenty fifteen we were pretty we were profitable again, fair very profitable, actually.
And it was and that was on the strength of of of better aluminum bats?
Better aluminum bats.
Deeper in wood bats, better in wood bats. So everything started going that year. And then we had more product categories, of course, that we were launching at that time, but you know, 2015 was a big year for us.
Okay, that ye and when you say big year like
Breaking ten million dollars in revenue?
Um, I'd say we were uh probably more like twenty five million in revenue that year. Wow.
So you're eleven years into the business now, and now you're a player.
Yeah. When you uh took over as CEO
Was it clear to you that at that this is twenty fourteen?
Was it clear to you that y that
Within a few years you needed to find
a an acquire to get you guys to the next level and uh you know to to really bring in serious capital to let you do what you want to do.
Yeah, I don't think so. I think we thought we could do it on our own. I really do.
Um yeah, we we were putting together a great team. We were having a lot of success.
Uh we made a great acquisition with Victus in twenty seventeen. Victus is a
was a company that was making custom wooden bat wood bats. Yeah. I mean if you're out there we see this up and coming company. We were every single
piece of wood we can make was going on the field to a major league player, right? At the major 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 league and getting all these young big leagueers 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 uh
You know, we could tell they were gonna be the future in bats. And quickly, as we surpassed Louis Slugger, I think in in twenty thirteen, they surpassed Louisville Slugger in twenty eighteen as a number two bad and used by major league players, I should say.
Correct. And and those and those are the those are the stats that people are like, Whoa, you surpassed Louisville Slugger on field and th that's when people know that, you know, baseball is everybody knows Louisville Sluger. 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.
Alright, and and to to overtake Louisville Slugger
Among professional players a big deal, but but Louva 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 wanna ask about Victus because
This is another company, they're making bats. You guys acquire them in twenty seventeen.
It didn't make sense to just fold it into Maruchi and just to
Ps stamp the Merucci name on the Victus bats?
Yeah, I don't think so.
Yeah, Maruchi has an honor the game feel and Vict has this change the game. They're more artistic and creative and almost like graffiti type art. And Maruchi was more of this
Uh
I don't wanna say conservative brand, like we we show up, we kinda 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 hat on backwards.
Um but it was it was different and it worked together and we pushed each other to the point of
You know,
We made each other better.
When did you start to make
A decent salary. Um by two thousand fourteen I imagine you're actually making a pretty good salary.
Yeah, we're making good money at that point in time, right? When we started Rucci 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 and really putting in the time'cause I knew that the more I worked,
the more success we were having and and I kinda got addicted to that.
And I think in in
twenty twenty.
You guys get acquired.
by a private equity firm.
uh called Compass. I think it was for around like two hundred million dollars, right?
That's correct.
W tell me the thinking around that acquisition. It was I imagine
The idea would be hey.
Now that we have a bigger
Fish here.
We can
Scale in the way we want to scale.
Yeah, I think some of it was in in twenty nineteen we decided that uh some of our shareholders had been in since two thousand nine.
Right, was no real return'cause we kept putting money back in the company.
But this was an opportunity for us to return some capital to shareholders and at that point in time
We had a lot of shareholders.
uh that had been in for a while. So there was a little shareholder fatigue, and you know, we saw an opportunity with the success we were having to then
Capitalize on that. Go to market.
And you know, we went and did the whole road show with with private equity and strategic and uh had a great outcome for all of our shareholders where everybody was was super pleased. And it was great for us as well.
And you stayed on as CEO.

I did. They kept my entire team.
You know, that acquisition was awesome for us, and we
quickly almost tripled our business.
uh within just three years w with their ownership.
Compass basically. So they
They bought you guys for two hundred million, you're making these acquisitions and growing
Mm-hmm.
Uh and that's the playbook oftentimes for private equity. Um
doesn't always work out, but it clearly did. Yeah.
In November of twenty twenty three,
They then sell the
the holding company that they the parent company that they built around Maruchi Sports. They sell it to another
Holding company called Fox.
factory for over half a billion dollars.
in November twenty twenty three, so a new parent company comes in. I mean
Wow, what an amazing
uh return in just three years.
Yeah. It was
It was an incredible run. Yeah. 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 as us.
And they Fox
Factor makes like
Mountain bikes, right?
That's right.
Shocks, trucks, bikes. Yeah.
You know, it's those high profile athletes and it's what's crazy is if you walk their halls
It's all bike riders. It's all people that have the trucks. They're they're out in all the you know, the desert races and they they love it. So it's got that same feeling as as Maruchi. Obviously we were a lot smaller than Fox, but it's it's been just amazing being a part of that family.
And you stayed on again.

You stayed on as as CEO.
I stayed on. They kept my entire team again.
Um, and they're investing in us and and and letting us go and
It's been fun.
So let's talk about where this is heading now because
From what I gather you guys are and and and you're
You're set to do a couple hundred million dollars in revenue, right? Meruchi sports this year.
And

It's uh just n basically the basic sort of knowledge I have about
the baseball opportunity or the market would be
You know, for sure Japan, Korea.
Are huge opportunities.
They are. Uh we've been highlighting Japan for the past five or six years. We have a full team there now, a full office and a hitter's house located in Tokyo. So we're doing a lot of investing in Japan. We see that as a a huge opportunity. And I think that's our biggest goal is is to grow our addressable market.
Right,'cause we know baseball, you know what the size of baseball is, softball
Is is a huge emphasis of ours.
You know, and then of course going in Japan and then other categories. There's plenty of other categories we're in now, but
It's it's not just these products that are out there. We're just gonna make'em. There has to be a story with it and technology.
Yeah. So what is Maru if I say what is Maruchi sports today? And I'd never met you before and I'm like what what is it? What do you guys sell?
How do you describe the the brand today?
You know, that's a that's a good question. Uh we are definitely outside of the diamond now.

probably a stigma we had for many, many, many years that we were just a bat company. But we we we now have our training facility. We have apparel. Uh we're we've we're launching footwear at the end of this year. It's on field and training.
Like spikes, like like cleats and stuff. That's correct.
Yeah,'cause you're a pitcher. I mean you could I mean, is there a world where you make ball you make baseballs?
We make baseballs now. So we we pretty much make every product for a baseball player head to toe now. Gloves, batting gloves, socks.
Sho you know, now footwear hats. I mean we we pretty much have every product now. We like to say we used to say we could outfit a player head to ankle.
Now as as of December this year it'll be head to toe.
Ай, содес.
You brokered a deal.
With major league baseball.
Yeah.
And starting
In the twenty twenty five season.
through the twenty twenty eight.
You will become the Ruchi Bats will become the official
That
The only
the the only the second company
to get that designation after, of course.
Mobile Sugar.
So you guys are the Louisville Slugger's always been the official bat of the MLB.
Next year.
There'll be Maruchi bats.
Yeah, I mean it's kind of a pinch yourself moment, right? This is kind of a validation of all that hard work and all the years we put into this to be the official bat. Um and of course Victus as well. Well, Maruchi 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 uh you know, we wanna bring that new
cool factor to the game. Like we like to change. We like we like the the new changes that are happening M L B and making it more fun for kids to play and making the games faster. We think it's really good for the game. Yeah.
When you think about where where you got you know, where you got you here, we're talking about
Again, if if I met you in two thousand four, I'd be like
Yeah.
I don't know, man. You know.
Wooden bats.
I you know, the market opportunity here is limited.
Yeah, so
Like I I you know, I'd have been skeptical.
But here here you are, you know, you're now heading up a a a brand that's doing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue a year.
How much of of where you got to now do you attribute to the work you put in and how much do you think has to do with
Just getting luck just getting lucky breaks.
I mean it's a that's a great question. I I think
We've been very lucky along the way.
just where we're located being in Baton Rouge. We've had some thing op doors open just from being here. But
Um I definitely can say just being consistent and putting in the time has helped.
Yeah.
I'll be honest with you, and I think when we sold this last time it came out, uh when I was addressing our whole teams the first time, not an emotional person, uh, but it came out as I was addressing the team that I broke down.
I I couldn't get it out.
It was just it was such a special moment to us that we
got to that point to sell to Fox and then
I enjoyed it for about one week.
And now I'm driven again to to do it again. I mean, I'm having fun. I gotta be honest with you. This is uh such a challenge for me. I kinda like it. I can't stay home. And this team here is is spectacular and
Yeah, I'd go to battle with these guys any day.
That's Kurt Ainsworth, co founder and CEO.

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.
Four to zero.
That game became known as the Miracle on Grass.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, please sign up for my newsletter at gyros.com or on Substack.
This episode was produced by Devin Schwartz with music composed by Ramtin Arablui.
It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Catherine Cypher.
Our engineers were Maggie Luthar and Jimmy Keeley.
Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, JC Howard, Carla Estevez, Sam Paulson, Chris Massini, Carrie Thomson.
John Isabella and Elaine Coates.
I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening.