Chic Spotlight: Baseball Lacelets

Cincy Chic: What is Baseball Lacelets?
Alexis Rosenbaum, Co-owner of Baseball Lacelets: Hannah King and I founded Baseball Lacelets in February 2014, to produce customized leather wrap bracelets made from the lacing in baseball gloves for men and women. Using replacement baseball glove lace from a U.S.-based tannery, Hannah and I cut the lacing to size before securing a tri-buckle closure to the leather. Using a laser engraver, each bracelet can be customized to fit a consumer’s request.

Cincy Chic: What’s the inspiration behind Baseball Lacelets?
Rosenbaum: In 2013, I was feeling lost professionally and turned to my husband for advice. My husband, Danny, a baseball pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, tossed a plastic bag of loose baseball glove lace at me and said “do something with this!” For two months, we took the loose lace and worked on bracelets to give to family members as holiday presents, even ordering a stamp kit off Ebay and teaching ourselves to stamp quotes onto the leather. When the bracelet closure became a stumbling block, Hannah entered the picture. The rest, as they say, is history.

Cincy Chic: Who’s behind Baseball Lacelets?
Rosenbaum: My sister Hannah King and I are behind the business as well as the recent addition of our third sister, Kelsey King, who is assisting us daily.

Cincy Chic: How much does a lacelet cost?
Rosenbaum: Our lacelets are $25 and are completely customizable to fit your wants and needs. The best part about buying right now is that if you shop our Kickstarter and support our next adventure, you can grab one for only $20 each or 6 for $100.

Cincy Chic: Tell us more about your Kickstarter campaign!
Rosenbaum: Of course! To cover the cost of our own laser engraver and rental space, we have introduced our Baseball Lacelets to Kickstarter with a goal of $18,000 in funding.

Kickstarter is a new way to fund creative projects. It’s a home for everything from films, games and music to art, design and technology. Kickstarter is full of projects big and small that are brought to life through the direct support of people like you.

In 2014, we made sure our customers were supplied with the freedom of making each Lacelet their own. To secure this part of our brand, we had to go from hand stamping each letter onto each Lacelet into developing a production process that was centered around laser engraving.

Today, we rent our laser engraver at a membership workshop for a monthly fee, which gave us the ability to learn the equipment and software we use before making the large investment in purchasing our very own laser engraver; however, our current manufacturing setting is not conducive to further business growth.
After a year of exploding growth, we have greatly outgrown the rented equipment and the lack of space that it comes with. In 2015, we’re chasing independence, our own equipment and even more storytelling.

Lacelets, along with other incentives, can now be ordered by backing our project and those who order can expect to receive their reward no later than May 2015. In order for Baseball Lacelets to reach more wrists, we need to meet or exceed our Kickstarter goal by Tuesday, March 31. If the project goal is not met, no incentives will be awarded.

Cincy Chic: Is there anything new on the horizon for Baseball Lacelets?
Rosenbaum: We are really excited about the opportunities that are coming our way and even more excited about a few new products we have been designing. Renting the laser engraver gives us very limited time to explore new products so it has taken us some time to really fine tune the route we wanted to take with our first new product line we are launching all month. Last week we released a Lacelet Keychain that still holds true to allowing our customer to customize the baseball glove lace, but now in the form of a keychain. We are really excited about providing a product for our non-jewelry wearing followers who love our brand, but aren’t interested in bracelets. The keychain is the first of many new items to come at Baseball Lacelets!

Cincy Chic: Where can readers go to learn more or support Baseball Lacelets?
Rosenbaum: Readers can check us out on Kickstarter. I have to admit, our video is pretty awesome! For more information, visit www.baseballlacelet.com or connect with us via Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.