Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Tim O’Day. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Tim, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
I’ve had a love of baseball since I was a kid. Every year my dad took me to the Oakland Coliseum to watch “Billy Ball” and the Bash Brothers take on the rest of the American League. My love of baseball continued through my youth and later in life, I was randomly asked by a coworker to umpire a Little League game. That first game got me interested in umpiring and I wanted to learn everything about it.
What started as a casual weekend gig quickly turned into something more as I learned more about umpiring. For the next 10 years, umpiring was my second job, and I worked up to 10 youth games a week. Fast forward and now I’ve umpired Little League, High School, and College baseball in Northern California, Southern California, Middle Tennessee, Indiana, and Kentucky.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
After years of standing behind the plate, I repeatedly took hits to my thighs from stray pitches and foul balls resulting in painful and ugly bruises. As my love for umpiring grew, so did the desire to protect myself. I was constantly upgrading my protective equipment and always trying something new – and there were some products available – but they were bulky, uncomfortable, or not meant for baseball. So the idea for ThighPro was born.
I saw the need and created ThighPro to protect umpires and catchers from wild pitches, foul balls and injuries. ThighPro is a garment created to protect the inner thighs of any athlete who is vulnerable in that area. The majority of our customer are baseball and softball catchers, umpires, la crosse players, and hockey players.
ThighPro protective garments use groundbreaking technology that consistently dissipate energy of high impact while maintaining ultimate comfort and performance. ThighPro is lightweight, flexible, breathable and absorbs up to 90% of impact force by forming a comfortable protective shell repeatedly, impact after impact.
ThighPro is a veteran owned company based in Orange County, CA and our products are crafted in the USA at a woman owned factory.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
I was very fortunate to have made connections with people in the baseball industry who believed in the product and saw the need. Having support and endorsement by individuals in Major and Minor League Baseball and at the D1 level definitely lend credibility to the product.
We are extraordinarily grateful to Bobby Wilson – Catching Coach for the 2023 World Series Champions Texas Rangers for his belief and support, Alan Espinal – Catcher for the Vanderbilt Commodores and the first ever athlete to try ThighPro, Chase Andrews – Catching Instructor at Stronghold Catching, who really took one for the team to illustrate how well ThighPro really works.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
The majority of our customers are referred to our shop from our social media account or posts/reels we’re tagged in and we were very fortunate to get some really good traction from Instagram Reels shortly after we launched. Our next largest referrer is organic google searches, we are a niche market so that works in our favor as far as google is concerned. Of course, word of mouth is an amazing marketing source.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thighpro.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thighpro
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thighpro
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thighpro
Image Credits
Amy Zawacki https://amyzawacki.com/