WrestlingGear.Com, Ltd. is a family-owned company started by Jeffrey Pape. All members of Jeff's family work in some capacity for the business, including his wife, Nancy, and stepson Dylan. Even Jackson, 8, and Alec, 7, enjoy working at the store with their Daddy.
WrestlingGear.Com was founded in 1998 to sell adidas wrestling gear via the Internet. Initially our website exclusively offered adidas wrestling products and the ordering process lasted about three weeks. Now, with our extensive inventory and expedited delivery options, a package can now be received in about 24 hours. Our office is located in Franklin Park, a suburb of Chicago and is located about five minutes from O'Hare airport.
In 1999 we received our first and only source of outside capital. A local entrepreneur provided "angel" investing to allow us to buy our first inventory. This reduced order time significantly and our sales increased over 100% during 1999. That year we had a major update to the website and functionality. As has been the case each year, we continue to add new products to the site per our customers' request - at this time expanding our offering of wrestling shoes within the adidas brand.
In 2000, we once again experienced over 100% growth. We added new products and initated a major website design. In 2001 we brought all credit card processing in house and no longer relied on outsourcing our credit card processing.
During 2001 and 2002 we added Cliff Keen and Tanita products to our inventory. It was during this time that we were finally were accepted in the wrestling gear industry, drawing hundreds of thousands of new visitors to our website.
In 2003, Jeff Pape, the owner, started at Northwestern's Kellogg MBA program. Changes included a new business strategy along with with improved marketing efforts to drive more traffic to the site. In 2003, we once again experienced tremendous growth while many others seemed satisfied with growth rates in the single digits. The website drew over 100,000 visitors to the site in a month - formerly a number comparable to six months' of traffic. In 2003 we added Asics wrestling products to our inventory. Asics was the last major wrestling manufacturer that WrestlingGear.Com did not carry.
In 2004 Jeffrey Pape purchased the remaining shares from the initial investor that had faith way back in 1999. A major initiative that was launched during 2004 was to provide each customer an opportunity to let us know about their shopping experience with WrestlingGear.Com. Insights gained from this feedback have allowed us to improve the customer experience. Site traffic has continued to increase. More print ads were placed in wrestling magazines like USA Wrestler, Wrestling USA, WIN Magazine and Amateur Wrestling News.
In 2005 we continued to expand - hiring another full-time employee - started a Wrestling Gear blog, sponsoring wrestling clinics, and continuing to provide action photography for IllinoisWrestling.Com. Jeff finished his MBA from Kellog with majors in Operations and Marketing and saw the birth of his second child, Alec. New products added included DVDs from Championship Productions, t-shirts from ImageSport, and Ivan Ivanov's Bulgarian throwing dummies. We continued to take care of our customers and they rewarded us with another year of outstanding growth.
In 2006, Jeff was sitting at a session for Alums of Kellogg's MBA program, and an executive was talking about his company's mini-grant program and it's impact on the grant recipients. That's the moment Jeff realized WrestlingGear.Com could have an impact. We started a major program that year that benefited the Smile Train and were a major sponsor at a Breast Cancer Fundraiser along with helping local and national wrestling teams. We also helped raise money and awareness about the dropping of the Fresno State wrestling team. In November, we were mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article based on a speech Jeff gave in early 2004. Based on the success of 2006, Jeff was asked to address University of Maryland and Kellogg MBA students and to talk with Leyden high school students in early 2007.
In 2007 we continued to expand, bringing on an additional full-time employee, Dan Jamieson. Along with hiring Dan, we moved to a facility that was more than 3 times our location at that time. We moved into Elmhurst, IL and currently located at 655 W. Grand Ave Unit 140 (in between Lake St or Route 83 and York Road). New products this year included MMA gear from Clinch gear as we made a small step into the MMA world. We held our 2nd annual wrestling clinic raising several more thousand dollars for The Smile Train. ASICS Wrestling Shoes were the ones to have in 2007 including the Cael Sanderson V 3.0 and Rulon's. The hot adidas Wrestling Shoes of 2007 were the Responses. For the first year since we starting selling ASICS, they caught and passed adidas wrestling products in sales.
In 2008 we continued to grow, although it was our slowest growth rate since we opened our doors. Jeff started The Pape Foundation and we held our first and second fundraisers. Our golf outing raised money for The Smile Train and The National Wrestling Hall of Fame - Illinois Chapter. Between the golf outing and the wrestling clinic, we raised almost $10,000 for these two organizations. We started the process to sell Nike products and were approved in the beginning of 2009. The hot ASICS Wrestling Shoes were the Rulons and the Supreme Lyteflex 2. The popular adidas Wrestling Shoes were the white adiStars. Major press for the year saw us written up in the Chicago Sun Times in a feature article along with being quoted two times in an article appearing in the New York Times. A major family event (at least wrestling related) was our sons, Jackson and Alec, started to attend wrestling practice.
In 2009 we experienced our first decrease in sales. It was only a matter of time before the economy effected us and we took it on the chin a little bit. One highlight from 2009 was adding Nike wrestling to our partners. The hot shoe was again from Asics Wrestling - the Black and Gold Rulon and Black and Red Rulon were the hot shoes. Our WrestlingGear.Com facebook fan page would be launched along with WrestlingGear.Net, Flickr Photo Page and we would continue to build our Youtube Channel. Our facebook page would go on to be one of the largest wrestling facebook fan pages in the world. As of 2011, none of our competitors have caught up to our over 52,000 fans. Jeff Pape, our owner, was recognized by the Illinois Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association as their 2009 Man of the Year.
In 2010 we launched our first ever printed catalog. Wow we definitely are biased but we think it was one of the best catalogs out there. Jake Herbert appeared on the front cover of the catalog.The hot shoes were again the Black and Gold Rulons and Black and Red Rulons (Check out the Aggressors - they are the updated Rulon's). In August 2010, we completely relaunched our website. The first major website redesign in almost 10 years. We don't expect to wait another 10 years to update our site the next time.
In 2011, WrestlingGear.Com did it's largest production of it's catalog. We actively and aggressively worked to build our catalog business. Don't expect with our committment to the catalog business that we pulled back our committment to the web. We launched our WrestlingGear.Com specific twitter page Along with our Twitter page, we created a bunch of wrestling gear and shoe related videos and featured them on our website. We even created a free video technique section on our site too - Learn How to Wrestle. The hot shoes for 2011 were the Aggressors and the Cael's along with the adiZero.
WrestlingGear.Com, Ltd. - the wrestling gear pro - is a privately held company whose only investor is Jeffrey Pape.
The Various Looks of WrestlingGear.Com:
April 1999 |
May 2000 |
December 2000 |
May 2003 |
May 2004 |
May 2010 |
|
