Worcester Manufacturer Dons A Rally Cap | Baseball gloves make a comeback on Fremont Street
Photo/Matt Pilon
WELL IN HAND: Jim Devaney hopes a new baseball glove venture will lead to long-term success for his Worcester company.
The Worcester-made, handcrafted baseball glove nearly met its untimely end last year.
Longtime leather goods manufacturer Jim Devaney and his two sons had entered into a joint venture in 2007 making baseball gloves under the name GoodGlove USA LLC for Texas-based athletic equipment manufacturer Nokona. The deal made GoodGlove one of the few remaining glove manufacturers left in the United States.
Armed with lean manufacturing techniques, high-tech equipment and a deep background in leather goods design and manufacturing, things were looking bright for the company, which was housed in the same Fremont Street facility as Devaney’s 42-year-old leather goods company, The Valkyrie Co. Inc.
But then it all fell apart.
Financial Trouble
Nokona filed for bankruptcy, owing GoodGlove more than $1 million and approximately $180,000 to other creditors, according to bankruptcy filings.
Nokona was GoodGlove’s only customer. Devaney was forced to lay off 24 employees who had been making the gloves on Fremont Street.
“It was very painful,” Devaney said. “It cost us a great deal of money.”
He couldn’t have guessed it then, but the situation has turned into an opportunity.
The Devaneys and several business associates reformed late last year with a new name, a new logo and a new strategy. Insignia Athletics is now designing and manufacturing their own lines of high-end gloves in the same space where they once made Nokona brand gloves.
The company has hired back the employees it lost plus six more. Devaney said the company plans to grow that number to 75 by the end of the year. Many are immigrants. That the workers came to America and are working in manufacturing to produce a product central to the American pastime is not lost on Devaney. It is a central piece of the story he and his sons tell to retailers and others.
Custom Work
And it seems to have worked. Insignia has lined up several major retailers who now carry and sell the gloves, which are priced from $150 to $329. Their gloves are sold online and will carried by Sports Authority, which will display Insignia gloves in 120 stores nationwide by the end of this year.
Devaney said that Insignia needs to triple its production to 300 gloves per day by the end of this year to meet demand. In order to hit that level of production, Insignia will move its manufacturing operation from a 10,000-square-foot space to a lower and mostly vacant floor that is roughly double the size this summer.
The new company was born of hundreds of hours of market research, Devaney said. What came out of that research is the way in which Insignia thinks it can differentiate itself from “formidable competitors” like Mizuno, Rawlings, Wilson and other major glove makers: customization.
Someone buying an Insignia glove can choose from an array of color and embroidery options to accent his or her glove. Ball players can choose their team colors. They can have their names or a phrase embroidered on the mitts. And the company guarantees that the glove will be on the customer’s doorstep in 10 business days.
That level of customization at that speed, Devaney said, is something competitors don’t do.
The company has spoken to high school baseball and softball coaches around the country. Insignia is building a database of high school team colors by geography and distributing gloves in those colors to Sports Authority.
When Devaney looks back at how he felt last year about the future about baseball glove manufacturing in Worcester, he denies that he felt hopeless.
“I’m a pretty optimistic guy,” he said. “We had to really work hard to try to take a position.”
But Devaney said that he could have never imagined how quick the rebound would be and the potential that he now sees for future growth. Last year hurt, but the silver lining is now obvious.
“This is the most fun we’ve ever had,” he said.
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