WrestlingGear.Com

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!

You guys asked for it so I did my next youtube show #10 on the Nike Wrestling shoes.

We have the Inflicts in stock at wrestlinggear.com

Check out our youtube video - it’s using a new camera - do you notice a difference?

Vote early and often for our next video? Nike Inflicts and New Nike Shoes? Adidas new shoes or DoubleSport’s new shoes? You can vote on twitter, this blog below and through our facebook groups and facebook profile page…we live in Chicago where even the deceased can vote two or three times. So we want you to vote early and often you can vote in as many places as you would like. It’s your choice on our next video.

The new adidas wrestling shoes are now available - at least several of them are available now for shipment. The new Response GT’s, new Response II, Tyrint’s, new Extero’s and Extero Jr are now in stock ready to ship. The new Mat Wizzards III and Cejudo’s did not come in as expected.

We did get a bunch of new white adistars in and a bunch of Nike Inflicts in yesterday.

-Jeff

I understand I am in the business of selling shoes so I may have an alterior motive then just writing this blog post, but use wrestling shoes just for wrestling. And use a cheaper pair or an older pair as a back up pair for practice and club practices.

In our area, we get some kids that come into our store. We don’t get a lot of foot traffic into our store, but based on conversations with parents and kids either at our store or through email or the phone. I think kids are wearing shoes way too much.

Now I was just as guilty of what I am telling people not to do, but back when we wrestled, we did not have club practices or off seasons or even in seasons (more kids wrestling) with 100 matches. Most high school kids are getting 35 to 50 in season matches now. Many youth wrestlers are getting that and more…and then there are club practices or morning practices or off season tournaments or early morning lifts or early morning runs.

Easy ways to extend the life of your shoes is to only wrestle in them. Don’t lift in them, don’t run in them outside the room, don’t wear them to gym class, don’t wear them to regular class, etc. Only wear them at practice.

Another thought, have a back up pair of shoes. And rotate the shoes out. If you can get a cheaper pair or close out pair (hint we’ll have some cheap wrestling shoes for sale - some as low as $35 bucks)…and then rotate your shoes.

Also, don’t let them get funky. The funk will not go away (although we are looking at a product - and we’ll need some people to bring in funky wrestling shoes to test it).

Finally, rotate these shoes. In my previous career, I had to wear nice shoes to work everyday and spent about what you guys are spending on high end wrestling shoes. I used two pair of these shoes and rotated them. Put Cedar trees in them and allowed the sweat to be absorbed out of them. Take care of your shoes and don’t leave them in a dark smelly lockerroom!

These shoes are no longer on pre-order status so the Free DVD offer no longer applies.

Expect to have an announcement shortly. We may be getting in some shoes much faster then we anticipated. We’ll see if we can get them in here in the near future.

Jeff Pape

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I guess we can’t post results via the widget here…so you’ll have to go to our home page to see the results - http://www.wrestlinggear.com

Also, we recently started a facebook page just for wrestlinggear.com and for our competitors to check out (j/k stop reading this if you are a competitor)…we posted some pictures from our store/warehouse…

Mat Wizard III Wrestling Shoes SKU: G02652 Sizes: 5-13, 14, 15 Price:$124.98 Availability: Accepting Pre-Orders