glove – Backerjack

Whatever your music tastes GoGlove plugs into the new wave

The Premise. Exercising can be even more exhilarating and fruitful with the right music on to help push you to go further. No music, or slow sappy music, can completely mess with your workout rhythm or even make you want to stop. Most music players need to be handled manually in order to change the song, which can be a total hassle.

The Product. The GoGlove is a sports glove that connects to your music player via Bluetooth. Using different finger touch patterns, the wearer can adjust the volume, skip, go back, activate SIRI, play and pause their music on the go. The thin glove can be worn alone or underneath a ski glove for those engaging in winter sports. Its black material makes it look discreet and subtle.

The Pitch. GoGlove’s campaign video shows a humorous montage of runners, cyclists and other athletic types interrupted by a sappy love song. Its creators discuss the functionality of their product, along with stretch goals. The rest of the campaign discusses battery life and other tech specs of the glove. GoGlove is reaching for a $50,000 goal in a month-long Kickstarter campaign.

The Perks. For early-glove-wearers, the product is $69 or $79 at a regular price with estimated delivery in December 2014. A stretch goal of $60,000 has been set in the hopes of creating an accompanying Android/iOS app so that wearers can customize their glove experience. A second stretch goal of $100,000 would allow the creators to develop a second product in a wristband form, for warmer sports.

The Potential. There’s nothing like exercising to great music and most people know what it’s like to be powering it out to Beyonce only to lag behind when Jack Johnson comes on. Lots of headphones and earbuds offer a way to adjust the players volume easily, but don’t have the array of options that the GoGlove has. Similarly, most opt to simply make a gym or exercising playlist filled with techno jams to keep that heart rate up. Still, GoGlove’s concept is novel in the fitness accessory world and will certainly be a welcome addition to the market, especially for those engaging in colder sports.

Shoot Natural Glove helps make basketball players straight shooters

The Premise. Perfecting the one-handed shot in basketball is essential to honing a player’s game. It’s difficult to learn this shot, however, and most make the mistake of using two hands which can mess up the accuracy of the shot.

The Product. The Shoot Natural Glove is a basketball shooting training tool that allows players to feel what it’s like to shoot a proper one-handed basket. It is simply a glove that shapes the hand in the correct way for a one-handed shot by eliminating “thumbing”, one of the biggest problems in basketball shooting according to the campaign. The glove is black, fingerless, reversible and keeps the thumb rigid with a piece of built-in plastic.

The Pitch. Shot in a gym and accompanied by a number of demos as well as a cameo by a former NBA pro, the video for the Natural Glove tells the story of how the creator came inspired to create the glove. After breaking his thumb and ignoring doctors’ orders about staying off the court, he discovered that his cast helped his game. It was this incident that gave him the idea for his product. This shooting aid hopes to raise a relatively modest $5,000 in a 30-day run on Kickstarter.

The Perks. One Shoot Glove goes for $30 on Kickstarter with an estimated delivery date of June 2014. Reward tiers go up to $250. A stretch goal of $15,000 has been set to allow for more options for glove colors in the future.

The Potential. Other products don’t seem to offer the flexibility that the Shoot Natural Glove does. For instance, the J-Glove isn’t ambidextrous like the Natural Glove is and can only be bought either for the left side or right side. The Shotloc aid is quite rigid and doesn’t really teach the player what a good shot feels like, but only really works when worn with few lasting effects. It seems that the Shoot Natural Glove is one of the few out there that focuses on the guide hand alone, teaches muscle memory and doesn’t constrict the hand like other aids do. In addition, the price isn’t bad either, especially for a glove that fits onto both the left and right hands.