The BRUCE BOLT Story


BRUCE BOLT is a family owned and operated family business based in Austin, TX. The company was started in 2017 by Bear Mayer, a 16-year-old baseball player who wanted better batting gloves and needed money for his first truck, a ‘93 Landcruiser named Jennifer.

WHO IS BRUCE BOLT?

Almost everyone asks us, "Who is BRUCE BOLT?"

Actually, BRUCE is Bear's grandfather.  He was an exceptional athlete and a great baseball player who just loved to compete.  He still tells great stories about when he played, like the first time he took over as starting SS for his prep school's varsity team.  He had 3 balls hit to him in a row.  The first two were terrible errors, but the third one he turned into an unassisted triple play - that's BRUCE for you. 

And the "BOLT"? Well, that's because BRUCE is one of the few people in the world who's been hit by lightning TWICE and lived to tell about it.

We figured BRUCE BOLT encapsulated the spirit of our company - a team that appreciates every day and every moment (because you never know when you're going to get struck by lightning, again) as an opportunity to compete and BE BETTER. 

BE BETTER

“Be Better” is the prevailing mantra for everything we do at BRUCE BOLT.  Basically, when Bear started the company, he wanted to design the best batting gloves in baseball. But every time we’d finish a design, we’d look at it and ask, “How can it BE BETTER?” And then we’d go back to the drawing board. We started asking that about everything - materials, craftsmanship, packaging, operations, accounting, new products and even how we could give back to the baseball community.

We hope the spirit of our mission carries over to the players that use our products. We hope players wearing our products are always asking themselves how they can “BE BETTER” whether they are playing, training, studying, spending time with family or giving back to their community.  We can never be perfect, but we can always “BE BETTER”.

DESIGN, MATERIALS AND CRAFTSMANSHIP

We believe design, materials and craftsmanship are the 3 components to making anything great.

DESIGN

We studied every high-end batting glove on the market.  We picked the best features from the most popular gloves and then we made our gloves better.  Our designs were refined to consider the nuances of the human hand. For instance, we recognized the conical shape of each finger so we cut our leather to fit tighter at the fingertip.
    
          
We also knew that the bones of the wrist don't form a straight line across the bottom of your palm, so we cut our gloves to follow the medial articulation of the wrist.  By cutting the leather this way, there weren't any unnecessary seams where the bat contacts the hand which is a big reason our gloves last so long.

 

Last but not least, our “double inverse” Long Cuff glove design with a 360 Wrap is unlike any other in the market.  Bear designed the Long Cuff gloves to provide the same support players get by taping their wrists. It's fun to watch players try these on for the first time.  Once they feel the support from 360 Wrap around their wrist, they "get it".  They're really awesome.  

 

MATERIALS

To complement our utilitarian design, we only use 0.9mm Cabretta leather on our gloves. Cabretta leather is the softest most durable leather in the world.  Our gloves are so durable, they lasted our testers their entire high school season and most of their summer select season. Even though our gloves are super soft, the Cabretta leather actually forms to your hand over time. And if the leather ever starts to dry out, simply rub leather conditioner or mink oil inside and out, and they'll be good as new.

 

CRAFTSMANSHIP

We were fortunate to bring on a team that each average over 10 years of experience producing luxury leather products.  They were instrumental in our choices around design to minimize wear zones and stitching to minimize contact zones with the hand to make our gloves feel more like luxury driving gloves than batting gloves.

Each pair of our gloves is handmade in small batches.  This allows our team to strive for excellence with every pair we make.  We take tremendous pride in our quality and craftsmanship. If our products don't meet your expectations, then they don't meet ours and well make it right.

 

THANK YOU!

BRUCE BOLT sincerely appreciates your support.  We hope you love our products and tell your teammates about what we’re doing.  Please follow us on Instagram @brucebolt.us and sign up for our newsletter for exclusive deals and new product announcements.

 

 

 

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