Mechanix Wear at the right place, right time from start

Back in 1992, there wasn't much in the way of equipment for NASCAR pit crews that wasn't already used somewhere else.

A dedicated bunch of motocross racers, led by Jim Hale, stepped in and changed the face of the game, and the company has spun that early success into the lion's share of the NASCAR market.

• Send Ron your thoughts
• More Business news

"When we first got to NASCAR, we saw pit crews wearing batting gloves from baseball to change tires and using kneepads from volleyball," said Ted Abdon, head of the motorsports division for Mechanix Wear. "Essentially, we were a motocross apparel company, and one of the riders that we sponsored in motocross, his mechanic asked us to make a set of gloves to work on the motorcycle with. At the time, we were using a lot of state-of-the-art, high-tech materials to make gloves for riders, so we automatically used those materials to make the mechanic's gloves.

"After working with this gentleman [Brian Lunniss] -- who is now the head of our R&D department -- and some friends of his, we made the initial production run, which I think was 200 pair. We took them to the Daytona 500 in 1992, and at that time they said, 'Oh, these gloves are awesome.' They ran through the initial run in a couple of hours, and everybody loved them. We had to get more for the next week. That's kind of where it started."

One of the first teams to get into Mechanix Wear products was Richard Childress Racing, specifically the No. 3 team of driver Dale Earnhardt for the 1992 Daytona 500. Roger Penske's IndyCar team was another early devotee, and that was a big part of the early success of the new product.

"When the most respected teams in the business started putting their hands in our gloves, everyone else in racing took notice," said Bari Waalk, Mechanix Wear's marketing director. "Once the word got out in the garage that there was a glove designed specifically for mechanics, other teams quickly began calling."

As so often happens in NASCAR racing, the Mechanix Wear folks were in the right place at the right time with the right product, and the result has been phenomenal.

Abdon said that on a given NASCAR weekend, there are "400 to 600" crew members wearing Mechanix Wear products to do their jobs. (Continued)