A Letter to Our Boston Family

A Letter To Our Boston Family,

I founded Ball and Buck as a student at Babson College back in 2008. When we were literally selling t-shirts out of the back of a car, I never would have imagined the amazing brand we would grow to become. More than anything, I attribute our success as a brand to the loyal Boston supporters and early customers we bonded with when our brand was in its infancy. As we move out of our physical Boston store and turn a new chapter in Ball and Buck’s history I wanted to take a moment to remember why Boston was and will always be such a huge part of our history.

Boston - we’ve been through a lot together.

In the early days, we built our our first store together late at night after long hours of desk work in Cambridge. Our North End store located at 3 Lewis St was just a few hundred square feet but your overwhelming support meant that we had outgrown that space in just a years time.

Then we graduated into the “big leagues”. We moved into a persistently vacant downstairs space on the corner of Newbury and Dartmouth; the old site of a video rental store. We opened the doors with one big dream (and one barber chair) and were off to the races.


 

It was on Newbury St that we grew up together. We crowdfunded our first ever product, the Hunter’s Shirt, which was followed by our beloved 6 Point Pants, Upland Jacket and a full line of gear built for those who only wanted the highest quality.

We collaborated with our backyard best friend, New Balance, with the launch of our iconic 574 Collaboration shoes and handed out doughnuts and coffee to the line of customers that camped out overnight in anticipation of its release. The Bruins won the Stanley Cup and we even celebrated with some Boston made gear! Over the years we sold over 160,000 products, and with Dwayne leading our barbershop, we cut over 30,000 heads of hair and took home the award of best barbershop in America.

We’ve also been through some challenging times together. We navigated challenges ranging from petty theft to the stealing of our beloved shop motorbike, flooding from our bath loving upstairs neighbors, to the tragic Boston Bombing that happened just 1/2 block away shaking our products off the shelves and our team to its core. We also decided it was a good idea to shave my head for the Perfect Wallet kickstarter video which never grew back in…

Now as we close the chapter on our physical store in Boston and shift to an eCommerce focused based brand, I wanted to say thank you for all your support and continued loyalty to our mission of building the highest quality products in the world that get better with age.

Thanks,

Mark Bollman, President & Founder
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