How many glove makers are there really?

bkekcs,
there are only a handful of manufacturers overseas, they make most of the gloves from most of the glove companies, ie. Rawlings, Wilson, Mizuno. Most of the smaller companies, Akadema, Kelley, Pinkard, all go through them as well.

Nokona makes their own in TX. Trevino is also made in TX,

Same thing with baseballs, the Pro Nine guys used to work for Diamond, until they decided to go out on their own.

Anyone can have their own baseball equipment company, it's a matter of contacts and finance, the more money put into the the products, the better they are.

It's amaizing what you can gather just by talking to people.

And wood bats, whew???? That's a whole nother ballgame alltogether!

You will find simularities with Kazuma and Glove****h. Especially Glovesmiths new custom elite and custom select series. www.glovesmith.com (I'm certain that Glovesmiths are made in MO though)

Kelley, Akadema and Pinkard are very similar in construction, Kelley pre-oils their gloves and Akadema does not.

Barraza, Rolin, Soto, Swenson, Yenacco all have almost identical construction, although the leather on some of the Barraza and Rolin gloves are a little different.

With gloves, like wood bats, the same patterns (or traces) are used by all. I was talking to Mr. Pinkard (Pinkard gloves and the original Diamond ball guy) one day a while back, and he told me that he invented the "I" web and everyone else took it.

Every man for himself.

Glovesmith doesn't sell their gloves directly, but you can order from this interesting site:
http://www.customglove.com/

I thought a custom glove with embroidered name on it would make a nice gift for a high level player. Rawlings makes those but they are pricey and the delivery seems ridiculously slow.

Glovesmith custom models start around $159 with only a three week delivery time. Not bad at all.

By the way, my sons aren't very particular about their gloves ("only a bad carpenter blames his tools," I guess) I don't think we ever paid more than $80 for one before.

Anyone here have a custom made glove? Any tips?

Glove Man

Thanks for the input. It makes me wonder. When various posters are recommending various gloves, are they are actually promoting one and putting down another that are the same except for the label?

So many of the brands have their proprietary names for their leather that the poor leather illiterates like me don't know what they are talking about. Do you have any leather education you can provide?

there are only a handful of manufacturers overseas, they make most of the gloves from most of the glove companies, ie. Rawlings, Wilson, Mizuno. Most of the smaller companies, Akadema, Kelley, Pinkard, all go through them as well.

Nokona makes their own in TX. Trevino is also made in TX,

Same thing with baseballs, the Pro Nine guys used to work for Diamond, until they decided to go out on their own.

I know that most of the power woodworking tools are made in China by the same factories. But the quality of the materials and the quality control is better on some than others. They may look the same but are vastly different in quality and performance.

Ballgloves may be the same where they look the same but the quality in the workmanship and material could vary.

quote:

Originally posted by chengshuyan88:
there are only a handful of manufacturers overseas, they make most of the gloves from most of the glove companies, ie. Rawlings, Wilson, Mizuno. Most of the smaller companies, Akadema, Kelley, Pinkard, all go through them as well.

Nokona makes their own in TX. Trevino is also made in TX,

Same thing with baseballs, the Pro Nine guys used to work for Diamond, until they decided to go out on their own.

Excellent post! What's your view on shoes?