Sunday, October 4, 2009

2009 New Hot Wrestling Shoes

So with this blog post, I am going to try and do two things. Identify what the new hot wrestling shoes are at wrestlinggear.com and what shoes are going to be hard to fnd come the start of the season (let’s say that date is November 1, but we know for you hardcore wrestling fans the season never ends). I’ll give some insight into what I think it going on and it may be the reason and it may not be the reason. Most of my vendors don’t explicitely say, but I’ll try to guess is the reason.

I went through my sales the past month or so and looked for shoes that I said wow - we sold a ton of those wrestling shoes. Looked at Nike wrestling shoes, adidas wrestling shoes and ASICS wrestling shoes primarily.

So here are some of the top new wrestling shoes to look at - I am not going to clog this blog post with a ton of url’s. Just click the links above to the different brands web pages and you should be able to find them. Keep in mind these are based on retail sales and not team sales or bulk buys.

Here is my list of hot new wrestling shoes for 2009

  1. Dan Gable Ultimate 2 - Black
  2. Cael Sanderson V4.0 - Black
  3. Nike Takedown

Here is my list of top wrestling shoes that are carry overs from prior years

  1. adistar - White
  2. Rulon’s - Black and Gold and Black and Red
  3. Response I - Black and Gold

And finally here is my list of top wrestling shoes you are going to have a hard time finding this year (or so we think)

  1. Rulon’s - Black and Gold and Black and Red
  2. adistar - White ( I believe we are the only dealer that has a full size run left in these)
  3. Nike Inflict - already gone in both colors (nothing available 9 to 11.5)
  4. Nike Takedown - very similar sole to the Inflict so this will be the shoe of choice for those that can’t get an Inflict
  5. Mat Flex - availability right now is very limited.

The surprise for me this year really is Nike and the Mat Flex. This is our first year selling Nike (not by choice - we have wanted them since we started in 1998). Inflicts are gone and now I think sales are flowing to the new Nike Takedown shoe because the outsole is very similar. I would not mess around if you want these shoes.

Rulon’s and adistars likely are basically gone this year. At the very least the White adistar is gone from the line, but we still have some in our inventory. Rulon’s will be hard to find this year likely because ASICS just simply did not make enough this year (or all the companies really booked it high and then added to their inventory when they sold well). Unfortunately we did not do this and we will likely run out before we get any significant Ruon’s in February and March.

Another thing to look out for is if you have to have a particular youth shoe or entry level shoe - I’d recommend getting it sooner than later too. I have been trying to put together team orders and the inventory is light on many shoes. I suspect this is a result of the economy and simply the vendors (just like I don’t) don’t want to get caught with a bunch of inventory.

And a final comment - remember you can shop at http://www.wrestlinggear.com for all your wrestling needs. Right now most orders are going out the same business day and almost all orders are shipped within the next business day. This means you get your gear quickly - and right now we have a special gift offer on our website. Put your gear in a shopping cart to see what it is.

Posted by WrestlingGear.Com - Wrestling Shoes and Wrestling Gear at 14:43:08 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Is Bigger Better?

Yesterday, I experienced the opposite…bigger is definitely not better. We use one of the largest companies that helps process internet transaction - authorize.net. They had a fire in the building where they keep their equipment (fire was not in their part of the building), but it effected their equipment. I guess shame on me for assuming one of the largest companies that helps process credit card transactions would have backups through out the world that they could switch over to…

With that said, when you are shopping around to decide where to spend your money…bigger is not always better. Granted we are one of the largest wrestling stores in the country, but there are big name sporting goods stores that are much much bigger than us that more than 1 out of every 4 of the US Wrestling shoe market shop.

How are we different, we are committed to wrestling year round. Those companies are so big even if they just committ to wrestling for about 6 weeks they control much of the market. We carry the entie lines of Nike Wrestling Shoes, adidas Wrestling Shoes, ASICS wrestlig shoes, Double Sport Wrestling Shoes and Matman wrestling shoes. We offer the most selection of wrestling shoes in the country. No one (to our knowledge) has all five of these brands under the same roof.

Another way we differ from the much larger sporting goods stores is we reinvest in wrestling. We help promote the sport at the youth, high school, college and Sr level (think Olympic/World Championships). When we do our advertising - we have allocated money to help wrestling teams promote their team and our company at the same time. We could just as easily put that money into a billboard or a yellow page ad that does not help wrestling as much, but we are responsible with our advertising budget and reinvest back into wrestling.

In these tough economic times, we are definitely feeling the crunch and do need the support our past customers but definitely need to bring new customers to our store and help create new wrestlers all of whom will hopefully buy from us in the future.

Take care - good luck this season. This is the time you need to start training for next Feb/March!

Posted by WrestlingGear.Com - Wrestling Shoes and Wrestling Gear at 13:47:44 | Permalink | No Comments »

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Get the Top Wrestling Gear While You Still Can

Here is a brief article I wrote for our email newsletter. Remember you can sign up for free. We will also send you info when we add a new free technique video and specials. Also, remember to join wrestlinggear.net to interact with wrestlers through out the world (we have two international members now).
 
Each year we try to predict what will be the top gear and what will run out. And each year we kick ourselves because top gear we should have known will sell out always does and some gear we just totally guess wrong on…
 
So we’ll see what this year’s predictions brings…keeping in mind all the manufacturers are likely to be lean and mean with inventory this year…which means we predict more than any 10 years we have been in business a bunch of gear will be sold out by the time the season starts. So if you don’t plan on growing too much, you might want to look at some of this gear.
 
Nike - they will basically have two pairs of shoes. One black and white and another white and black. The Speedsweep will be available in youth and adult sizes and will be prices around $35 and $42. The Takedown will be available at around $60. The Inflict Wrestling Shoes, which we have, were dropped from the line. We’ll we bought up just about any available Inflict that was left and we’ll have a few more coming in around September. The Speedsweeps will be poplular because they will be about 30% cheaper then adidas or ASICS equivalent. And the Inflicts will likely be gone in many popular sizes by September. Do not wait on these shoes…
 
adidas - they carried over a lot of shoes from last year and brought out a ton of new shoes this year. I suspect inventory will be tight on most of the new stuff and much of the inventory they brought back this year has already been bought. So what does this mean for you? We’ll if you want a Response or an adistrike wrestling shoe in a particular color from last year, look to buy it now. We only have some key sizes left in those two shoes and many are already gone from adidas. If you want a white adistar, we are the only place in the country that has some of those left in good sizes. Black adistars should not be too difficult to find early in September and October, but watch out for early November when sales start heating up. So few people carry them that I suspect that shoe will be tough to get in late December and early January.
 
Several sizes of the Cejudo’s are already out until adidas reloads them later this year. We’ll see how those sell. Last year the $80 shoes did not sell well for us, but this is a different economy so that shoe might sell through well this year with parents telling their kids they have to make sacrifices.
 
Mat Wizards - I suspect the top color will be White and if the Red and Gold shoes sell out White will be a safe choice and then those will be gone. Again this is an expensive shoe so I suspect many of my competitors went short in this shoe and we are all trying to clean up our inventory a little bit and I suspect pulling back a little bit with our high end shoes.
 
ASICS - with the Ultratek coming back this year sales of their high end shoes may suffer. Really adidas Black adistar is almost a new shoe since it was only available at a few places last year. Top colors of the Ultratek will be the Grey and the Red, White, Blue shoe a  lot of the elite wrestlers are wearing. The Dan Gable wrestling shoes are the wild card, many wrestlers unfortunately have no idea who Dan Gable or even Cael Sanderson are…will this shoe be a hot shoe this year? I think it will. They have safe color choices that I think will sell through this year.
 
Rulon’s - hey can the Rulon Wrestling Shoes make it two or three years in a row with sell outs? We want to know! Sales will almost have to slip in this shoe. It’s everywhere right now and I can’t see it selling again, but we will likely have a bunch of these available in Black and Gold and Black and Red. Those shoes have been a great seller and have sold out each year. Don’t wait on these shoes if you have to have them, otherwise, you’ll be looking at a different color than the one you want for next year.
 
Cael’s they pruned a few of the bad colors or should I say slow selling colors from this year’s line up. Look for the Navy Blue shoe to sell well in PA. Did ASICS know they needed to make a Cael shoe for Penn State this year? In case you don’t know what I am referring to, Cael switched from Iowa State to Penn State this year. These are sort of like the Cejudo’s the $80 shoes did not sell very well last year and I suspect they will sell about as well as they did last year. The main factor will be how much do ASICS and adidas committ to having them in inventory. I suspect that will be a main factor in availability of the Cejudo’s and Caels for next season.
 
Old School Update (e.g. last year’s shoes)
 
Some of the top selling shoes in years past are still available at our site. We have select sizes in Cael’s, Gable’s, Responses, and adistrikes. We have seen an up tick in sales of these shoes as people are realizing they are harder to find since we are all trying to keep our inventory a little tighter this year. At least twice a month I get an email from someone looking for a shoe from a year or two ago, hoping we have a secret spot in the warehouse where we put inventory that we don’t want to have on our website. If you are looking at any of these shoes, look to getting them now for the summer season/summercamp season. I can tell you in many of these shoes we are already sold out and won’t be bringing more of them in this season.
 
Next week we’ll write up some more top gear that we think you should be taking a look at…
Posted by WrestlingGear.Com - Wrestling Shoes and Wrestling Gear at 14:33:53 | Permalink | No Comments »