THEY SAID HIS GLOVES WERE IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE.

In the beginning, X made his gloves one at a time.

Each one started as an idea and slowly became something real through cutting, stitching, shaping and an unreasonable amount of detail.

But as more people discovered the gloves, X realized something.

If he wanted players around the world to experience what he was creating, he couldn't do it alone.

He needed to find other artisans who could bring his ideas to life exactly as he dreamed them up.

That turned out to be much harder than expected.

Not because it was difficult to find someone who could make a baseball glove.

It was difficult to find someone who could make his baseball gloves.

THE SEARCH FOR ARTISANS

So X started searching.

The search took him around the world.

The United States. Italy. Vietnam. Thailand. Japan. Canada. Mexico.

At one point, he even explored having the gloves made in Switzerland.

X worked with factories considered among the best glove makers in the world, including makers behind some of the biggest names in baseball.

They knew how to make great baseball gloves.

But X's designs were different.

Tiny, individually cut pieces of leather. Intricate, smooth curving patterns. Unusual constructions. Complicated stitching. Details that weren't simply printed onto the surface of a glove, but physically built into it to last a lifetime.

If a design looked like it was made from 30 different pieces of leather, it probably was.

Some factories tried and couldn't execute the designs.

Some could only make them if X agreed to simplify them or print the artwork onto the glove.

Others looked at the drawings and wouldn't even try.

They called them "impossible."

X kept searching.

Factory after factory.

Sample after sample.

Country after country.

Until the search eventually led him to a small group of skilled leather artisans in a small town in China.

They looked at the same designs others had struggled with and did something different.

They started figuring out how to make them possible.

They cut the pieces.

Developed new constructions.

Worked through details other makers couldn't execute.

Got the right machinery and tools.

And eventually, a sample arrived that looked like the glove X had actually dreamed up.

Not a simplified version.

Not their interpretation.

The glove.

X had finally found his artisans.

They're the same people who make our gloves today.

BUT X STILL WASN'T SATISFIED.

The craftsmanship was finally capable of bringing his art to life.

But X didn't believe the leather was worthy of the craftsmanship.

So the search started again.

This time, not for who would make his gloves.

But for what they should be made from.

That search eventually took X to Japan.

He wanted something very specific.

Leather with enough structure to create and hold a beautiful pocket.

Leather that could form around an individual player's hand rather than simply becoming soft.

Leather that was incredibly durable.

Leather with a feel unlike anything else he had played with.

And leather capable of producing the unusual colors X needed to create his art without sacrificing performance.

Finding it required developing a different approach.

Working with partners in Japan, X began experimenting with leather, specifications and processes until he found the combination he had been searching for.

The result became the foundation of today's "ARiA" glove.

Exactly how we make that leather?

We're keeping that part to ourselves.

Some ridiculous things are better kept secret.

THEN WE DIDN'T TELL ANYONE.

In 2025, X quietly began putting the new leather into Absolutely Ridiculous gloves.

There wasn't a giant launch.

There wasn't an announcement about some revolutionary new material.

There wasn't a marketing campaign telling everyone we had created the greatest leather in baseball.

X just made the gloves better.

And waited to see if players noticed.

They did.

College programs like Clemson University began putting Absolutely Ridiculous gloves on the field.

Clemson University became one of them.

Then professional players started finding the gloves.

Big leaguers, players with access to essentially any baseball glove in the world, began choosing to game ARiA (aka Absolutely Ridiculous innovation for Athletes).

Something had changed.

For years, people noticed X's gloves because of what they could see.

The ridiculous designs.

The colors.

The details.

The tiny pieces of leather stitched together to turn a baseball glove into functional art.

Now players were noticing what you couldn't see in a photograph.

The feel.

The structure.

The pocket.

The way the glove formed.

The way the leather performed.

The way it aged.

What began as an attempt to make the most ridiculous baseball gloves in the world had quietly become an obsession with making one of the best.

FUNCTIONAL ART. IN THAT ORDER.

X has never believed a baseball glove should sacrifice performance for design.

The art doesn't give us permission to take shortcuts.

It gives us fewer places to hide them.

If a design requires dozens of individually cut pieces of leather, we cut them.

If a curve is difficult to stitch, we figure out how to stitch it.

If constructing something properly takes longer than printing an image onto the surface, it takes longer.

That's what functional art means to us.

Not artwork placed on sporting equipment.

Something that performs at the highest level and happens to be art.

The order matters.

Function first. Art second.

Always.

BASEBALL DESERVES THAT.

For X, baseball was never just the industry he decided to build a company in.

He grew up in the game.

X played baseball himself. His father played professionally. His family includes generations of professional players and coaches, including a Hall of Fame coach as a grandfather.

There is a respect for the game that comes with that.

And when X started turning baseball equipment into art, there was one line he refused to cross:

Never make the product worse for the sake of making the art better.

Make it ridiculous.

Make something nobody has seen before.

Make a kid stare at it from across the field.

But when the ball is hit your way with the game on the line, it has to be a great baseball glove first.

That philosophy doesn't end when we finish making your glove.

It changes the way we believe you should break it in, care for it and ultimately make it your own.

YOUR GLOVE SHOULD BECOME YOUR GLOVE.

That's why we recommend our gloves at 0% factory break-in.

Your new ARiA glove is supposed to be stiff.

Very stiff.

We know we could make it softer before it reaches you.

We choose not to.

Because there is a difference between breaking a glove in and breaking leather down.

We believe your hand should do the forming.

A baseball glove changes as you use it.

The hinges begin developing where your hand naturally closes.

The pocket begins forming around the way you receive the ball.

The leather starts giving in the places where you need movement while maintaining structure in the places where you don't.

Little by little, the glove starts remembering you.

Your hand.

Your closure.

Your pocket.

Your glove.

That doesn't happen instantly.

And we don't think it should.

We're not trying to make the glove that feels best during the first five minutes you own it.

We're trying to make the glove you don't want to replace years from now and becomes an extension of you.

DON'T BREAK IT DOWN.

There are plenty of shortcuts for making a baseball glove feel game-ready faster.

Our recommendation is simple:

Don't.

Don't cook it.

Don't soak it.

Don't repeatedly crush the entire glove trying to make every piece of leather soft (this is how gloves that arrive from the store broken in or squeezable were done).

And don't mistake "soft" for "broken in."

A properly broken-in glove should still have structure.

Work the areas that are supposed to move.

Form the pocket.

Play catch.

Wear it.

Use it.

Let the glove learn your hand.

It takes patience.

That's part of owning something made from great leather.

Don't break it down. Break it in.

TAKE CARE OF THE LEATHER.

Once the glove becomes yours, take care of it.

Leather is a natural material.

It responds to moisture, dirt, sweat, heat, use and time.

That's why X approached glove conditioner the same way he approached the glove itself and partnered with a local expert here in Nashville, TN by the name of Ball Players Balm. Together, they developed the world's first scented glove conditioner to bring the theme to life through scent.

No shortcuts.

Our glove conditioner is made using all-natural ingredients and developed to protect and replenish the leather without unnecessarily weighing it down or oversaturating it.

And more isn't better.

You shouldn't constantly drown a glove in conditioner trying to keep it soft.

Use a small amount when the leather needs it.

Work a thin layer evenly into clean, dry leather.

Allow it to absorb naturally.

Remove any excess.

Then go play.

LET IT GET OLD.

We don't want your ARiA glove to look brand new forever.

Seriously.

Great leather isn't supposed to remain frozen in time.

It develops character.

It forms.

It creases.

The colors evolve.

The pocket becomes unmistakably yours.

Every practice, game, catch, dive, mistake and ridiculous play leaves something behind.

Years from now, we don't want your glove to look like it did the day you opened the box.

We want it to look like your glove, full of stories and memories, making it an even more unique piece of art to hang on your wall when you grow old.

Because we didn't search the world for artisans, develop our own leather in a foreign land and obsess over every tiny piece of its construction for years so it could be disposable.

We built it to be used.

We built it to age.

We built it to become yours.

And hopefully, someday, it tells an even better story than the one about how we made it.

Now that is Absolutely Ridiculous.