YouSaid · the spoken record

Kurt Ainsworth

lines on the record: 104
first: 2024-12-16
most recent: 2024-12-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 thing doors open just from being here. But I definitely can say just being consistent and putting in the time has helped. Know 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 teams the first time, not an emotional person, but it came out as I was addressing the team that I broke down. 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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. Will Hamuchi and Victus will both be official bats next year. So that's a huge opportunity for us. We don't take it lightly. And we want to bring that new cool factor to the game. Like we like to change. 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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We make baseballs now. So we pretty much make every product for a baseball player head to toe now, 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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know that's a good question. We are definitely outside of the diamond now. I think that was 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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 hitter's 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 into 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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, shocks, trucks, bikes. It's those high profile athletes. And what's crazy is if you walk their halls, it's all bike riders. It's all people that have the trucks. They're out in all the desert races and they love it. So it's got that same feeling as Marucci. Obviously, we were a lot smaller than Fox, but it's been just amazing being a part of that family.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did. They kept my entire team. That acquisition was awesome for us. And we quickly almost tripled our business within just three years with their ownership.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think some of it was in 2019, we decided that some of our shareholders had been in since 2009, 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 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 private equity and strategics and had a great outcome for all of our shareholders where everybody was super pleased and it was great for us as well.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we're making good money at that point in time, right? When we started Ruchi Sports, we decided to take bigger salaries as we were raising some capital. And, you know, we were putting in crazy hours. 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 the guy that was 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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I don't think so. It's a different culture. Maruchi has an honor the game feel, and Victus has this changed 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 different and it worked together and we pushed each other to the point of we made each other better.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. And those are the stats that people are like, whoa, you're surpassed Louisville slugger on field. And that's when people know that baseball is, everybody knows Louisville Sugger. 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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 bets. 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. They'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 we could tell they were going to be the future in bats. And quickly as we surpassed Louisville, I think in 2013, they surpassed Louisville Sugger in 2018 as the number too bad.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did we, and I will say that was the first time we had a board as an independent board of some really high profile and quality board members 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 were going to take these bats, 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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 the kids. The kids weren't excited about the bats. And so we had to do something And then as soon as that happened, I was named CEO. I guess I would say early in 2014. And 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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“didn't right because we didn't change anything 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 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 that was, you talk about frustration. That was a tough learning lesson right there in 2012.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did we actually took him 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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, the NCAA just told me that they're going to decertify our bats. And I literally couldn't speak. And I was like, A minute, what does that mean? We just bought Maruchi Bad Company. We just took on these shareholders. Of our bats in the market, we're going to have to recall, and we're the hottest bat right now in the market. 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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At that point in time, we had no idea that there was variances in the test, and 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?”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They sent it to a lab at Washington State and they shoot a ball off a stationary bat, and it measures the rebound of the bat. And so they measure it every inch along the barrel. And they had sent us reports back and said that our bat had failed.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did and I think locally we probably did okay early in 2009. 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 them hit with it. And I would say 2009, we did pretty well in a first year. But then when the NCAA changed the regulations to BB Corps, which is just a basically a rule change that made the bats perform more wood-like, everything changed.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 kids' school, and I'd be happy. Obviously, we paid a little bit more than the kids' school, but he trusted us to go build something with the name that we created together.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and that's what happened in 2011. We negotiated with Maruchi Sports Muchi Bad Company to acquire Muchi Bad Company, become one company.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I mean, Albert Puholz was an early one, of course. You know, Ryan Voglsong, the next giant at that time, you know, Sean Casey, Harold Reynolds, you know, we've had David Ortiz, Jose Bautista. I mean, it was kind of a who's who of players, Will Clark, 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 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 and you're paying a royalty to Marucci Bat Company on everything we're doing.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Some of it was players, but some of it was kind of, I would say, family office or just, you know, wealthier people”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It 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 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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And so Reed cold called us, and I can tell you he said, Look, let me come down there and meet with you and Joe. And Reed came down. He said, look, if we create this other separate LLC under Muchi Sports, I can raise the money that we need. And we can create this other brand and go do aluminum bats”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the bats, it was, you know, you could 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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, youth baseball, right? And that's aluminum bats. So that was our next focus we wanted to come out with an aluminum bat.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It turned out to be a great deal. And we kept the team, we kept the family involved. 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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Now it would be a little bit different because we pretty much cut off every competitor at that time. And so now Maruchi, 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 on a couple of early investors in Ruchi Bat Company alone, just small investors, to help us pay for some of that wood.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They did at that point. When we started having Albert Puholes and some of those guys winning MVPs at that point in time, they started taking notice. Because 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. And we knew there was risk.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, 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”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, he was more of a, he would talk to the clubhouse managers and some of the players would call him and then he would send in bad orders from his phone. But, you know, he wasn't really coming to the office at all and seeing the bats be made at all at that point.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, that salary would have been really small. We had made enough money in Big Leagues at Baton Rouge to hold us over a little bit. And then for this next, I would say this next adventure, we decided to go in with Murji Sports was where we then focused all of our attention.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No crazy story is we actually kind of bought it back down the road and it's a hitter's house now. That same location where we are is our Meroji hitter's house here in town and they're still doing batting cages, retail store and there's an area in the back where people can do lessons and get better. So it was one of those things that's special to us because we wouldn't be here without Bigleys and Betton Rouge.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was a lot. And I had three young kids at the time. And, 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. But it got to the point where it was just too much. And at that point, Marucci started taking off and doing better. So we sold that business.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“High school and youth mainly. So Joe and I would show up at 6:30 in the morning and work for Maruchi from 6 30 to 2 30. We would kind of change into our PE uniforms we called it and then we would go do lessons till 9 p.m. Monday through Friday and then lessons on Sunday 12 to 6 and we were booked out for several months at a time. We were doing 200 and I think 220 private lessons each a month.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct, and it was a baseball batting cages and training facility. And we opened that in the summer, really, of 2006. And we put together a staff there 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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, my wife kind of gave me that hard discussion of like, hey, what are you going to do? You know, baseball's over. What are you going to do? You guys need to start making some money because we weren't taking anything out of Ruchi. 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. The big leagues.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the front seat of our Tahoe. And I just another 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.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 the hospital wild my arms in a sling. So, I mean, we've had some crazy things happen along the way.”
2024-12-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT