Bobby Buggs
SBF Site Sponsor
Over the past 8 years I have been asked many times "How did you get into this Evil thing?" Well I thought it might be time to go over it. Im sure some folks will have great time with this story, say what you need to but every account here is nothing but true.
Roll back to 1980s, I was always interested in having my own sports brand. Companies like Body Glove and No Fear really peaked my interest with action sports and cool logos. At the time they were hot commodities and even though not everyone knew exactly what they made or stood for, people just thought they were Cool me included. I even had a NO fear sticker on my snow board back in 1993 and a Body Glove sticker on my car back in 1985. No I never was a surfer
just liked the design of the logo.
Now some of you know this first hand but Im am a very different type of personality. A marketing guy and technical specialist, not a common mix of traits. I actually am a Board Certified Entomologist the tech side, and I own Pest management firms where I develop and implement advertising and marketing strategies.
Well fast forward to the mid 90s, a guy named Demarini reshapes softball with this new double wall bat design. It was the most fun bat I had ever hit with.I always had one in my bag and still do today. I searched for all the info I could get on this guy, even found a 1989 instructional hitting tape from him before he had a bat company.
On to 2000, a bat came out called the Worth PST. A virtually indestructible bat with a price of $400. This bat was like Demarini in the fact it had 2 separate metal components but in the case of the PST the 2nd one, the "shell" was on the out side of the bat. By design and to avoid patent issues the PST had a 100% interference fit. That meant there was not a uniformed gap between the 2 metal surfaces, one of the reasons the Demarini hit so well and had a great sweet spot was the gap between the 2 walls.
So I use my PST a bunch of times and quite frankly for me it sucked. A waste of $400. Im down hitting with some friends and they had the same bat and their bat had a totally different sound and feel when hitting it. It also had a couple waives in it and looked like the cap was coming out.
What I found was they had been hitting the thing all winter out side and the bat started to get out of round. Being 2 different materials the out side shell deformed differently than the underlying frame and that created "gaps" between the 2 walls. Thus allowing the bat to perform more like a Demarini. The Cap was not coming out of the bat, the Exterior shell was falling down because there was some space between the 2 walls now.
So I look at my $400 log and say this thing sucks, lets take it apart and see why it doesn't hit well. Maybe when its apart we can figure out a way to make it work like my Demarini.
What I found was my bat had massive amounts of a glue called Durabond adhesive between the 2 shells. I cleaned that off and tried the bat, it was better but not like the one I hit of my friends. Knowing that I was not going to use this bat for games I applied the Demarini gap principal to the shell removing about .005 off the inside wall along 80% of the wall leaving the ends of the shell stock like legs. The ends were the contact point and the middle had space between the 2 surfaces allowing it to flex on contact.----______---- crude but thats what a cross section would have looked like.
I put it back together and tried it out The sound was outstanding and it was the best hitting bat I had put my hands on. No we didnt use it in games, it had a poured urethane end cap just to close the end off and give it some weight. But during BP you could hear the thing ring in the parking lot. So I post my findings on a popular 1990s softball message board and was flooded with requests to do them for other people. This was before the composite glass craze and I didnt really think it would be a big deal to do a couple for some of the people on that site. I had NO idea what I was getting into and by the summer of 2001 I was overwhelmed with people contacting me about this. People started calling me Dr Evil and were saying get your bat Evilized by Bobby Buggs. So much that I started my own message board and called it the Shop of Evil. In a short 9 months I had over 1800 registered users. I realized then this was a huge marketing opportunity and started forming some logos for Evil. I had Bat bags made and imported with Evil logos on the bottom, I knew I was starting something here.
But all along there was the black market component of doing something that was not approved for play, it never really sat well with me. My entire adult life I was all about success with legit business and positive messages, I needed a way to get this Evil thing on the right side of the game. In 2003 I came up with the idea for an Evil Ball, a ball that flew farther through improved design but was totally Legal for all association play. I posted this concept on the Shop of Evil message board as it was my place to publicly kick around my ideas. In March of 03 I got a message from some folks at Anac0nda sports, Im like who the hell are these guys They said they were in a position to build this Evil design, would I like to meet with them to discuss the possibilities. I figure what do I have to lose, a 1.5 hour drive to meet with a 40 million dollar company?? why not.
Part 2
So I decide to head down to Anac0nda head quarters and meet the owner John Stote aka The Rock Man, named after his basket ball line "The Rock". Now remember I come from a business background and Im going to a meeting at a 40 million dollar company and its president. I break out my finest Canali suit and head down there. When I get there Rock Man was not in his office so I did a quick tour of the facility. Back to his office and there he is, a guy in a white Rock basket ball T shirt, blue jeans and a hat on. Seen here with some of the Minnesota twins in his usual attire
He says your Bobby Buggs the Evil guy??.... you look more like the accountant. I said your the president of a 40 million dollar company??? we both laughed and I knew we hit it off right away. We talked about the whole Evil ball concept and he was so excited, I remember him saying "Buggs, I Love it!!!" laughing and saying this is gonna be a blast. He emphasized to me privately, Buggs, as business owners we both really dont need any more headaches, this has to be fun or its not worth it. Remember we need to keep it fun. I fully understood what he meant and said, lets get after it, but If it becomes too much of a hassle we will meet and shut it down.
After our meeting we really had nothing more than a handshake agreement but I knew in my heart his word was as good as some $500 lawyer drafted distribution agreement. In the end I was totally right.
So Team Evil began and the real players were Bob Russell, John Stote and Eric Jacobson. Eric, among many other things at Anac0nda, is the point man for all the Evil orders and handled every one of my transactions. He still does today as Evil is one of his largest accounts. You can find him in his office every day at 6am putting on all the Evil internet orders from the night before. I know this because I get all the confirmations from him at 6 am when he gets in and starts entering his orders. Eric is one of the hardest working and most knowledgeable people in the baseball softball industry. He is the glue behind the baseball/softball portion of Anac0nda. No way all my customers would get things in a timely fashion without his efforts.
Stote turned out to a great business partner and never balked about the next Evil idea I would dream up, And trust me there have been a few winners but he would always say "Buggs are we having fun?? then lets get it done!" It didnt hurt that every time a load of Evil Balls arrived at the warehouse we had 50 and sometimes 75% of them sold before they even got there. They got checked in at the receiving entrance and went right out to the UPS line to fill all the preorders. They never touched the shelves.
By the end of March 2003 I had registered the trademarks for Evil Sports and Evil ball and we were off to the races. There are other marks like Microcell technology, ES and a few others.
June of 2003 was a huge month. Right after the McQuade softball tourney I met John in Minneapolis for a Home run display in the Metrodome before a Twins/Brewers game. This was the first time the Ultimate Evil was seen in the public. Rusty and Helmer hit the biggest shots with Helmer hitting them Above the Kerby Puckett banner. We really didnt want Rust hitting the Ultimate's as we were concerned about the safety of the fans in the front row of the left field seats. Worried about one of those 10 foot high liners drilling someone in the head. No one got drilled but the pitcher had a close call.
Later that season the first Evil ASA ball hit the fields and it started quite an uproar.
So its 2004, Im really trying find my way out of the bat thing as the Evil Ball line had really started to take off. Stote tells me Im really going to have to make a choice, Evil ball or the bat business. He said you cant be on both sides of the fence. He said Im not going to tell you what to decide but I think you know what you have to do. Later that summer it became even more clear to me as ASA contacted Anac0nda asking what their relationship was with me and this Evil line. ASA told Anac0nda they had secured bats from all the internet bat Drs and were looking to make examples of people. What they were really looking for was people painting bats which left me out but it became even more apparent I needed to get of this bat stuff. After hearing about this I went out publicly and tried to warn some of the other people in the bat biz. I told them there was a **** storm coming and they needed to be smart about what they were doing. I actually made a post here on this site. But these guys knew way more about this than I did and told me No one could touch them. At that point I felt I did what I could to warn people.
Soon after that I was contacted by the Utrip attorney basically saying the same thing Stote said to me. He asked me to get out of the bat business and agree to a statement on the utrip website that I was out of the business. He didn't try to strong arm me or threaten any legal action he just said logically "Bob...where is going to go". At that point I knew today was the day agreeing to his statement and closed the Shop of Evil.
http://www.usssa.com/usssa/usssa-general/BatDoctorsRetirementAnnouncements.htm Interestingly enough the Utrip attorney was the former legal council for Demarini, he knew exactly what I was doing and didn't bring up there was any patent infringement on Demarini designs. A month or 2 later I was contacted by a reporter from the Wall street journal. He asked me all kinds of questions and most of them I answered "Im not the guy your looking for, Im out of that stuff". I told him the basics but nothing more. He published his article the following spring.
Much to the dismay of all the faceless internet haters on this site there were no deals made, no requests for information about other bat Drs and Never did anyone from ASA contact me. ASA already had bats from all the bat Drs they were interested in before they contacted Anac0nda. No one forced me out of the Shop of Evil, As I said from the beginning I was never comfortable being a black marketeer. Back in 2002-2003 I knew I needed to be out of it and it was clear now was the time.
Now keep in mind the Evil ball was on its own, there was very little direction or support from Anac0nda. They imported, warehoused and shipped the ball but I was totally responsible for promoting the Evil brand. Anac0nda did put the ball in their catalog but they had their own ball lines to sell and were quite busy doing that. Knowing it was really all up to me I traveled the country to a bunch of events, sponsored HR derbies and donated to many causes. I felt since Evil was successful I should give back to some of the people in the game. On average I donated over $4000 in Evil gear each season. I remember one of the reps from Anac0nda saying that's more than he did and he had a much larger base of business. But I didn't get into this to pay my bills I did it for fun and the chance to develop my own brand, which had now become a reality. I have since recruited D!cks sporting goods as a customer and we have many small mid level retailers across the country selling Evil. We are currently in negotiations with Lids stores in the malls and that could happen next season. I get requests from stores daily and have to say no to some as we dont want every store on the block selling our ball and we like to protect the people that have been with us from the beginning. Again a strategy a company doing this only for profit would not employ.
I got to meet some great people along the way, one of them was the creator and vision behind Boombah, Greg Miller aka Boomer. We had a regular annual event at the Vegas worlds in December we would do together and I still crack up at the stunts we pulled there. Greg is a super creative guy and we had a blast during the grass roots movements for our companies. He will always be a close personal friend to Evil. What up Cuzzy
Evil ball has become one of the most sought after soft balls in production today.
In the past couple years the Evil ball line has grown faster than we can accommodate. Its gotten to the point where we have to start planning our orders for the following year in June/July. This year is no exception with over 12,000 dozen balls produced and being shipped. Due to the insane popularity of the Evil Ball even at 12,000 dozen we still have our annual inventory crunch which seems to plague us each season. Its left people in a position to have to use 2nd and 3rd tier choices for softballs, trust me thats the last thing we want to do to our loyal customer base. Just know that a couple weeks away there are literally thousands of Evil balls ready to be shipped to our customers. Our 2011 edition of the BamBoom hybrid wood softball bat should be here by the end of April. I would be remiss by failing to mention there were many other people that helped to make this a success like Joe D, Gail, the warehouse guys, and many others at Anac0nda, I just dont think its appropriate to mention the names.
One other thing many people dont know, EVIL stands for something more than a brand, it stands for Extreme Vision In Life, its all about the Vision of success. Empowering people and athletes to go beyond their greatest accomplishments.
My success here was not without a vision, it was not an accident. No religious overtones intended.
Who would have thought an Entomologist would be the proud owner of a sports brand that does over 150,000 softballs a season and continues to grow each year??
Believe in the Vision of success, I did.
Roll back to 1980s, I was always interested in having my own sports brand. Companies like Body Glove and No Fear really peaked my interest with action sports and cool logos. At the time they were hot commodities and even though not everyone knew exactly what they made or stood for, people just thought they were Cool me included. I even had a NO fear sticker on my snow board back in 1993 and a Body Glove sticker on my car back in 1985. No I never was a surfer
just liked the design of the logo.Now some of you know this first hand but Im am a very different type of personality. A marketing guy and technical specialist, not a common mix of traits. I actually am a Board Certified Entomologist the tech side, and I own Pest management firms where I develop and implement advertising and marketing strategies.
Well fast forward to the mid 90s, a guy named Demarini reshapes softball with this new double wall bat design. It was the most fun bat I had ever hit with.I always had one in my bag and still do today. I searched for all the info I could get on this guy, even found a 1989 instructional hitting tape from him before he had a bat company.
On to 2000, a bat came out called the Worth PST. A virtually indestructible bat with a price of $400
. This bat was like Demarini in the fact it had 2 separate metal components but in the case of the PST the 2nd one, the "shell" was on the out side of the bat. By design and to avoid patent issues the PST had a 100% interference fit. That meant there was not a uniformed gap between the 2 metal surfaces, one of the reasons the Demarini hit so well and had a great sweet spot was the gap between the 2 walls.So I use my PST a bunch of times and quite frankly for me it sucked. A waste of $400. Im down hitting with some friends and they had the same bat and their bat had a totally different sound and feel when hitting it. It also had a couple waives in it and looked like the cap was coming out.
What I found was they had been hitting the thing all winter out side and the bat started to get out of round. Being 2 different materials the out side shell deformed differently than the underlying frame and that created "gaps" between the 2 walls. Thus allowing the bat to perform more like a Demarini. The Cap was not coming out of the bat, the Exterior shell was falling down because there was some space between the 2 walls now.
So I look at my $400 log and say this thing sucks, lets take it apart and see why it doesn't hit well. Maybe when its apart we can figure out a way to make it work like my Demarini.
What I found was my bat had massive amounts of a glue called Durabond adhesive between the 2 shells. I cleaned that off and tried the bat, it was better but not like the one I hit of my friends. Knowing that I was not going to use this bat for games I applied the Demarini gap principal to the shell removing about .005 off the inside wall along 80% of the wall leaving the ends of the shell stock like legs. The ends were the contact point and the middle had space between the 2 surfaces allowing it to flex on contact.----______---- crude but thats what a cross section would have looked like.
I put it back together and tried it out
The sound was outstanding and it was the best hitting bat I had put my hands on. No we didnt use it in games, it had a poured urethane end cap just to close the end off and give it some weight. But during BP you could hear the thing ring in the parking lot. So I post my findings on a popular 1990s softball message board and was flooded with requests to do them for other people. This was before the composite glass craze and I didnt really think it would be a big deal to do a couple for some of the people on that site. I had NO idea what I was getting into and by the summer of 2001 I was overwhelmed with people contacting me about this. People started calling me Dr Evil and were saying get your bat Evilized by Bobby Buggs. So much that I started my own message board and called it the Shop of Evil. In a short 9 months I had over 1800 registered users. I realized then this was a huge marketing opportunity and started forming some logos for Evil. I had Bat bags made and imported with Evil logos on the bottom, I knew I was starting something here.But all along there was the black market component of doing something that was not approved for play, it never really sat well with me. My entire adult life I was all about success with legit business and positive messages, I needed a way to get this Evil thing on the right side of the game. In 2003 I came up with the idea for an Evil Ball, a ball that flew farther through improved design but was totally Legal for all association play. I posted this concept on the Shop of Evil message board as it was my place to publicly kick around my ideas. In March of 03 I got a message from some folks at Anac0nda sports, Im like who the hell are these guys
They said they were in a position to build this Evil design, would I like to meet with them to discuss the possibilities. I figure what do I have to lose, a 1.5 hour drive to meet with a 40 million dollar company?? why not.Part 2
So I decide to head down to Anac0nda head quarters and meet the owner John Stote aka The Rock Man, named after his basket ball line "The Rock". Now remember I come from a business background and Im going to a meeting at a 40 million dollar company and its president. I break out my finest Canali suit and head down there. When I get there Rock Man was not in his office so I did a quick tour of the facility. Back to his office and there he is, a guy in a white Rock basket ball T shirt, blue jeans and a hat on. Seen here with some of the Minnesota twins in his usual attire
He says your Bobby Buggs the Evil guy??.... you look more like the accountant. I said your the president of a 40 million dollar company??? we both laughed and I knew we hit it off right away. We talked about the whole Evil ball concept and he was so excited, I remember him saying "Buggs, I Love it!!!" laughing and saying this is gonna be a blast. He emphasized to me privately, Buggs, as business owners we both really dont need any more headaches, this has to be fun or its not worth it. Remember we need to keep it fun. I fully understood what he meant and said, lets get after it, but If it becomes too much of a hassle we will meet and shut it down.
After our meeting we really had nothing more than a handshake agreement but I knew in my heart his word was as good as some $500 lawyer drafted distribution agreement. In the end I was totally right.
So Team Evil began and the real players were Bob Russell, John Stote and Eric Jacobson. Eric, among many other things at Anac0nda, is the point man for all the Evil orders and handled every one of my transactions. He still does today as Evil is one of his largest accounts. You can find him in his office every day at 6am putting on all the Evil internet orders from the night before. I know this because I get all the confirmations from him at 6 am when he gets in and starts entering his orders. Eric is one of the hardest working and most knowledgeable people in the baseball softball industry. He is the glue behind the baseball/softball portion of Anac0nda. No way all my customers would get things in a timely fashion without his efforts.
Stote turned out to a great business partner and never balked about the next Evil idea I would dream up, And trust me there have been a few winners
but he would always say "Buggs are we having fun?? then lets get it done!" It didnt hurt that every time a load of Evil Balls arrived at the warehouse we had 50 and sometimes 75% of them sold before they even got there. They got checked in at the receiving entrance and went right out to the UPS line to fill all the preorders. They never touched the shelves.By the end of March 2003 I had registered the trademarks for Evil Sports and Evil ball and we were off to the races. There are other marks like Microcell technology, ES and a few others.
June of 2003 was a huge month. Right after the McQuade softball tourney I met John in Minneapolis for a Home run display in the Metrodome before a Twins/Brewers game. This was the first time the Ultimate Evil was seen in the public. Rusty and Helmer hit the biggest shots with Helmer hitting them Above the Kerby Puckett banner. We really didnt want Rust hitting the Ultimate's as we were concerned about the safety of the fans in the front row of the left field seats. Worried about one of those 10 foot high liners drilling someone in the head. No one got drilled but the pitcher had a close call.
Later that season the first Evil ASA ball hit the fields and it started quite an uproar.
So its 2004, Im really trying find my way out of the bat thing as the Evil Ball line had really started to take off. Stote tells me Im really going to have to make a choice, Evil ball or the bat business. He said you cant be on both sides of the fence. He said Im not going to tell you what to decide but I think you know what you have to do. Later that summer it became even more clear to me as ASA contacted Anac0nda asking what their relationship was with me and this Evil line. ASA told Anac0nda they had secured bats from all the internet bat Drs and were looking to make examples of people. What they were really looking for was people painting bats which left me out but it became even more apparent I needed to get of this bat stuff. After hearing about this I went out publicly and tried to warn some of the other people in the bat biz. I told them there was a **** storm coming and they needed to be smart about what they were doing. I actually made a post here on this site. But these guys knew way more about this than I did and told me No one could touch them. At that point I felt I did what I could to warn people.
Soon after that I was contacted by the Utrip attorney basically saying the same thing Stote said to me. He asked me to get out of the bat business and agree to a statement on the utrip website that I was out of the business. He didn't try to strong arm me or threaten any legal action he just said logically "Bob...where is going to go". At that point I knew today was the day agreeing to his statement and closed the Shop of Evil.
http://www.usssa.com/usssa/usssa-general/BatDoctorsRetirementAnnouncements.htm Interestingly enough the Utrip attorney was the former legal council for Demarini, he knew exactly what I was doing and didn't bring up there was any patent infringement on Demarini designs. A month or 2 later I was contacted by a reporter from the Wall street journal. He asked me all kinds of questions and most of them I answered "Im not the guy your looking for, Im out of that stuff". I told him the basics but nothing more. He published his article the following spring.
Much to the dismay of all the faceless internet haters on this site there were no deals made, no requests for information about other bat Drs and Never did anyone from ASA contact me. ASA already had bats from all the bat Drs they were interested in before they contacted Anac0nda. No one forced me out of the Shop of Evil, As I said from the beginning I was never comfortable being a black marketeer. Back in 2002-2003 I knew I needed to be out of it and it was clear now was the time.
Now keep in mind the Evil ball was on its own, there was very little direction or support from Anac0nda. They imported, warehoused and shipped the ball but I was totally responsible for promoting the Evil brand. Anac0nda did put the ball in their catalog but they had their own ball lines to sell and were quite busy doing that. Knowing it was really all up to me I traveled the country to a bunch of events, sponsored HR derbies and donated to many causes. I felt since Evil was successful I should give back to some of the people in the game. On average I donated over $4000 in Evil gear each season. I remember one of the reps from Anac0nda saying that's more than he did and he had a much larger base of business. But I didn't get into this to pay my bills I did it for fun and the chance to develop my own brand, which had now become a reality. I have since recruited D!cks sporting goods as a customer and we have many small mid level retailers across the country selling Evil. We are currently in negotiations with Lids stores in the malls and that could happen next season. I get requests from stores daily and have to say no to some as we dont want every store on the block selling our ball and we like to protect the people that have been with us from the beginning. Again a strategy a company doing this only for profit would not employ.
I got to meet some great people along the way, one of them was the creator and vision behind Boombah, Greg Miller aka Boomer. We had a regular annual event at the Vegas worlds in December we would do together and I still crack up at the stunts we pulled there. Greg is a super creative guy and we had a blast during the grass roots movements for our companies. He will always be a close personal friend to Evil. What up Cuzzy
Evil ball has become one of the most sought after soft balls in production today.
In the past couple years the Evil ball line has grown faster than we can accommodate. Its gotten to the point where we have to start planning our orders for the following year in June/July. This year is no exception with over 12,000 dozen balls produced and being shipped. Due to the insane popularity of the Evil Ball even at 12,000 dozen we still have our annual inventory crunch which seems to plague us each season. Its left people in a position to have to use 2nd and 3rd tier choices for softballs, trust me thats the last thing we want to do to our loyal customer base. Just know that a couple weeks away there are literally thousands of Evil balls ready to be shipped to our customers. Our 2011 edition of the BamBoom hybrid wood softball bat should be here by the end of April. I would be remiss by failing to mention there were many other people that helped to make this a success like Joe D, Gail, the warehouse guys, and many others at Anac0nda, I just dont think its appropriate to mention the names.
One other thing many people dont know, EVIL stands for something more than a brand, it stands for Extreme Vision In Life, its all about the Vision of success. Empowering people and athletes to go beyond their greatest accomplishments.
My success here was not without a vision, it was not an accident. No religious overtones intended.
Who would have thought an Entomologist would be the proud owner of a sports brand that does over 150,000 softballs a season and continues to grow each year??
Believe in the Vision of success, I did.