How it all began (PART 1)

I’ve worked with many brands over the years – big and small – and established sales and marketing strategies across a wide spectrum of sporting goods products within the UK & Ireland.

Back in 2012, I was with one of my startup clients – Responseball.

Glenn Robertson (the inventor behind Responseball) and I were driving along beautiful Cotswold lanes having had a day visiting customers trying to launch his new brand.

As we left Stow-on-the-Wold, driving towards Burford, we began throwing ideas around about “something that could change the world of goalkeeping.”

I’m sure we threw around all sorts of crazy ideas – and had some fun brainstorming – when suddenly it came to me.

“I’ve got it,” I said.

“All goalkeeper brands work hard to try and develop the best latex for goalkeeper gloves and the best grip. The problem, however, is that the better the latex (and hence grip) the less time the latex lasts. The result? You pay top dollar for a goalkeeping glove with excellent grip but neither the grip or glove last very long. Or. You pay much less for a glove that lasts much longer but has little, or no, grip”

“What if we developed a spray” I continued “that could be applied to any level of a glove to make them tacky/grippy/sticky”

The car went silent.

The gravity of what I had said sank in and Glenn and I sat there, brains whirring, with a smile on our faces.

“I think you’ve cracked it,” he said.

(I might have added that bit since, to be honest, I can’t really recall what either of us said), suffice to say that I can remember the moment vividly and it was the day that gloveglu was born.

To be totally correct it was the day gloveglue was born.

It was only sometime later when I was talking to a work colleague – Dan Hume – about this fantastic new product that I was about to launch on an unsuspecting goalkeeping public that the name changed.

“Gloveglue?” he said, “without the ‘e’ at the end I assume?”

And thus gloveglu was born.

Things have moved on somewhat since then.

The product range has expanded and is available in 14 countries at the time of writing.