To all the Clutch Fans,
Hey everyone this is Josh and I wanted to take a bit to write this letter and let you know how much all your love and support means to Bobby and me. When we first started, one we didn’t know how the market would react to our new style of baseball batting gloves. So, we did a small soft launch with a prototype we digitally made. While we did have some negative feedback the overwhelming response was positive and asking where they could get them at. So, like Bobby mentioned in the video we emptied out our savings accounts and went for it. Kind of scary when you have a wife and two kids. But nothing ever comes to you in life you just have to go get it, so we did.
While coming up with the designs was the fun and easy part finding out where to get them made, well wasn’t fun nor easy. We ran into companies that didn’t want to make our batting gloves because they were new and we had so many detailed request and then found companies that said they would try. While most companies did just that try, one company decided to take $7,000 we put up for them to make them and then never return our calls or emails. When we tried to go and visit the company they were not there anymore. Talk about a punch in the gut. This was the first time we wanted to say, you know what maybe it’s not for us. But the one thing I love about Bobby (remember this is Josh talking) is he is a lot like me and when things get hard and we started to speak of stopping we both said f@ck it and it made us more determined. We got lucky and had 2 of the 17 manufactures we commissioned to try to make our designs able to make them, so we would good to go.
Until we ran into the next problem, the MOQ was a lot higher than we originally spoke about because our style was so “unique”. This was just another speed bump we had to go over. With our savings used for the sampling and tooling we used the next best thing we could think of to order the products. We used our credit cards and ordered the baseball batting gloves.
With our gloves on order we decided we would launch a pre-sale and based on the expectations we received from the manufacture the gloves would take 60 days to be made (and it was January 2016) so that would mean they would be delivered by March just in time for baseball. Yeah, that didn’t happen. The ETA date keep getting pushed back and pushed back to where they finally arrived in May. That to be said we had some upset customers and some understanding customers. Both we completely understood and refunded all money when asked, but our gloves were in so life was good.
Until we opened the box of all left-handed gloves, and they were all wrong. All those orders for left handed gloves had to be refunded or to switched to our only design that worked both ways the American Flag batting gloves. This was yet another speed bump we had to go over and we did but we didn’t care it was the middle of May and we had stock finally and could start our dream.
I sit here Febuary 3rd 2017 writing this for two reasons.
1. We want to personally thank each and every one of our fans and customers that stuck with us through all of that we went through. And to those who didn’t we completely understand and don’t blame you. If you ever want to give us a second chance, we are here with open arms.
2. The second reason is this, you see everything we had to go through to try to live our dream and to be honest we don’t know where we will be a year from now but it doesn’t matter. It all will be worth it. Steve Jobs said “your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life”, I write that to tell you we choose to live ours and create our dream. If you have a dream go out and create it, to be honest if it’s a rival company that does the same thing we do, go ahead and create it. You only get one at bat, so you might as well swing for the fence.
#StayClutch
Josh Zolotor
Co-Founder
Clutch Sports Apparel