MY STORY
Carpenter Trade Company was created in 2001 by Scott Carpenter.

After studying art and design at Rhode Island School of Design and Yale University Carpenter began designing and making sneakers in the late 1990’s. Nike set a trend in the industry by having the company’s headquarters, designers, and marketers in one country separate from the actual shoe makers who tended to be third-world contractors.
 

The shoe industry foreshadows many trends that impact how baseball gloves get made. After touring the factories of three different glove makers Carpenter decided to learn more. He went to work for

Rawlings in the small factory town of Ava, Missouri and was surprised to find that the assembly line process deliberately minimizes quality craftsmanship, permitting the use of unskilled labor and minimum wages. In 2001 Rawlings management decided to shut down this factory and rely more on foreign contractors with even lower paid workers.

 

After the Rawlings factory closed, Carpenter purchased some of their machinery and moved to Cooperstown, New York where he began studying gloves at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. This extensive research has given Carpenter valuable insight to the evolution of the baseball glove: how it started, how it developed, and where it’s now heading.

 


Carpenter has witnessed many negative effects of multinational corporations particularly in the poor quality and performance in the mass produced product. From the beginning, he decided to make gloves differently. As he has stated, “I am in a unique position having made hundreds of custom baseball gloves one at a time. Other designers may have worked at larger volume factories but none can say they made as many gloves entirely by their own hands.” It is in the repeated cycle of making, adjusting design, and remaking every part of a glove that the craft is refined to an art form. Carpenter also uses feedback from Major League Baseball players and coaches who have used his gloves, as well as his own field testing as a player representing Cooperstown in a regional baseball league. The final result is a baseball glove that provides outstanding performance advantages through highly skilled techniques that are original and exclusive to Carpenter gloves.

With demand growing for Carpenter gloves there are now others assisting in the process; however, Scott Carpenter still takes pride in doing most of the craftsmanship on every glove which, after all, bears his name and signature.