Grip Spritz's Road to Semi Pro Teams

Last July, a man named Tyler O'Quinn who runs the Midwest Basketball Company called us and wanted to work together as he transitioned into a league called TBL (The Basketball League).

We were focused solely on AAU basketball at the time but with COVID shutting that down, we figured we'd explore it. August came around and a TBL combine was taking place outside of Cleveland, so we showed up. We met the Commissioner, David Magley as well as a handful of team owners and players and they were all awesome. 

Not only did this open our eyes to the amount of opportunity out there, it gave us proof of concept. It was easy to demo Grip Spritz on a 4th grade girls shoe and watch them get excited. It was much different getting that same reaction from older players who had played the highest level most of their lives!

We posted about our experiences and cross promoted with the couple teams or players using our product and more and more semi pro teams and leagues started to take notice of us.

Next thing we know, we're at practices in Akron, tryouts in Rochester, and hand delivering product to teams in Columbus because they have a game to go to the Final 4 of their league in a couple hours.

This lead us to partnering with a division of the ABA and we learned a lot about mass production and the cost of bulk shipping across the United States. This crazy network of people we've built across the country and internationally with players, team owners, and leagues has been wild.

We want to continue to work with these groups and really expand our brand through the entire sport. Next week, we finally get back to an AAU event in Indiana and we're excited to get back into the gym with all the athletes.

The last year working with the ABA, PBL, TBA, TBL, OBA, SBL and many more (jokingly to us, the alphabet leagues) has taught us a ton about that market, introduced us to incredible business partners and athletes that all just want to see the game grow and help us be part of that!