The Ledger
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Ainsworth: Competitors admitted targeting Marucci to slow its market share growth
“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, you know, we kind of had …”
Ainsworth: Competitors' bats also failed lab tests, but only Marucci was decertified
“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,”
Ainsworth: Marucci and Victus both surpassed Louisville Slugger in MLB usage
“As we surpassed Louisville Slugger, I think in 2013, they surpassed Louisville Slugger in 2018 is the number two bad and used by major league players, I should say.”
Ainsworth: Marucci has never paid a player to swing its bats
“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.”
Marucci Sports nearly tripled its business in three years under Compass Diversified
“You know, that acquisition was awesome for us, and we quickly almost tripled our business within just three years with their ownership.”
Ainsworth: Marucci founders acquired their wood mill for under $500,000
“At that point in time, I think we were somewhere Just under half a million dollars for the whole mill.”
Ainsworth: Pujols, Ortiz, and other MLB stars invested in Marucci
“So, I mean Albert Pujols was an early one, of course. You know, Ryan Vogelsang, the next giant at that time. You know, Sean Casey, Harold Reynolds, you know, we've had so David Ortiz, Jose Bautista. I mean, it was kind of a who's who of players. Will Clark, my…”
Ainsworth: Co-founders ignored legal advice and acquired their timber mill supplier
“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.”
Ainsworth: Marucci compressed every bat with a cow femur
“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.”
Ainsworth: Marucci reached roughly $25M in revenue in 2015
“I'd say we were probably more like twenty five million in revenue that year.”
Ainsworth: Only ~7% of Marucci's wood meets pro player quality standards
“I think we started looking at our numbers. It's less than 10% of our wood. More like seven percent probably goes to a pro player.”
Ainsworth: Marucci weighs baseball bats down to a tenth of an ounce
“We weighed our bats down to the 10th of an ounce, which we still do to this day, and we wanted to be perfect.”
Ainsworth: 2012 bat decertification caused a multi-million dollar loss for Marucci
“We did. We actually took them to a scrapyard and recycled them. There was nothing else we could do with them, and it was a multi-million dollar hit for a company that didn't have money.”
Ainsworth: Early lead in maple bats drove Marucci's rapid market share growth
“And then the emerald ash beetle, the ash borer beetle came in and kind of wiped out most of the ash in the United States. So then it really forced everybody to Into Maple, and we had a really big head start on the Maple side, so that allowed us to gain market …”