Bats-Toi offers protective headgear for combat athletes and NFT platform

Ours The Startups series looking at companies and entrepreneurs that thrive in athlete performance, fan engagement, team/league operations and other high-impact areas of sports. If you would like to be considered for this series, tell us about your mission.

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The world’s shortest elevator pitch: “We offer a multi-sport, 3D printed headwear and NFT platform to drive digital engagement.”

Company: BATS TOI

Placement: Brooklyn, New York

Founded year: 2017

Website/App: https://batstoi.com/;

Funding round to date: “We’re doing a Series A.”

Who are your investors? “Our investors include Shane McMahon from WWE, Renzo Gracie from the Gracie family and some of our clients. We have raised $1.5 million.”

Looking for more investment? “Yes.”

Tell us about yourself, CEO and founder Mario Mercado: “I was a collegiate wrestler at Syracuse University. I wrestled for the New York Athletic Club, for Team USA, and I was a former deputy commissioner of the New York State Athletic Commission for boxing and MMA in New York State. As a former wrestler, who also went in graduate school—NYU and Columbia—I had to develop a senior project. The project I decided on was a headgear to better protect wrestlers from head injuries. During my work as a commissioner, I would see many athletes who had head injuries, not primarily from competition, but mostly from training. Since the regular headgear wasn’t really designed to protect against head injuries, I designed a new one at the engineering school at NYU.”

How does your product/service work? “For The Mercado, which is the product, it works as a multi-sport headgear. It is very easy to use. You put it on your head and it is form-fitting. We have integrated electronics inside that monitor your brain waves in real time to let you know if you’ve had a concussion. It is an on-site diagnostic tool. It’s the product. On the service side, for Digiyo, we wanted to provide an easy way for people to get involved in creating and minting their own NFTs that was very seamless and very easy to do. The reason we did Digiyo was to find another way to market the headgear, The Mercado. We built a marketplace where we could create our own NFTs. Many athletes asked us if they could do the same. We realized that the same platform we built our NFTs on, the ease of imprinting was something athletes could just as well do by taking the content from their phone, a video or a photo, and uploading it as easily as you would. Instagram posts.”

digiYo is here! Our new sports metaverse NFT platform. A brand new immersive digital experience. If you’re part of the sports community – wrestling, football, MMA and more – you need to check it out @digiYo3.

AR/VR, Custom 3D Animations AND a NIL Platform for Athletes! pic.twitter.com/cepmetTUhb

— BATS-TOI™ (bah-tua) (@bats_toi01) 29 September 2021

What problem does your company solve? “We are solving two problems. Giving athletes who need a soft shell headgear more protection and an easier product to use and (giving) athletes who want to get into NFTs a very easy way for them to monetize their content.”

What does your product cost and who is your target customer? “Mercado costs between $90-$150. Our target customers are athletes, wrestlers, flag football, seven on seven, women’s field hockey, lacrosse, soccer players. Athletes who require headgear with a soft shell in contact sports. For Digiyo, we offer a very easy way for athletes to mint their NFTs without having to pay a gas fee. It costs nothing. Our target customers are athletes, schools, teams and associations.”

How do you market your product? “We are the official wrestling headgear of the National Federation of State High School Associations and we have partnerships with other leagues, federations and teams around the country, NFHS being one of them. For Digiyo, our partnerships are Dapper Labs and Sony Music”

How do you scale and what is your targeted level of growth? “We are optimizing the partnerships we have and demonstrating the athlete health and safety value proposition with our headgear products, and continue to leverage those partnerships for Digiyo. Our goal is to equip every wrestler and flag football player in the country with our headgear.”

Who are your competitors and what makes you different? “For The Mercado, our competitors are older headwear companies. What makes us different is the style of our headgear, which is patented, the ease of use and manufacturing, the way it’s built and the whole look of it.”

What is the unfair advantage that sets your company apart? “We have several patents, both utility and design for The Mercado. It’s also our team, our business model, the partnerships we have. For the NFT platform, it’s really just about creating a very simple product that has a huge scale to be adopted on a larger scale.”

What milestone have you recently reached or will soon reach? “The first milestone we have reached is being the official wrestling headgear of the National Federation of high schools. We have achieved national recognition by the governing body of high school sports. Second, we have deployed the first NFT platform which is the easiest way for a normal layperson to upload and create an NFT. It’s that easy. It’s as easy as a bowl of Rice Krispies.”

Beyond the pandemic, what obstacles has your business had to overcome? “We have faced technical challenges in terms of production, logistics and financing.”

How has your business been affected by the current economic situation and how are you dealing with it? “We’ve become more agile and focused on how we spend every dollar. We’ve made sure that we’re able to justify spending every dollar and make sure that we’re not spending it just to spend more, but really focused on our core business model and our product and our problem productivity. It’s really making sure that for every dollar we spend, we can qualify it for necessity.”

What are the values ​​at the core of your brand? “The values ​​that are at the core of our brand are mental security and meaningful engagement in social media. Head safety because concussions lead to long-term effects, such as Parkinson’s and dementia, and have negative effects on society as a whole, not just for the athlete, but for everyone associated with the athlete. For social media, it’s important for us to just have a more meaningful social media experience, because those connections and that engagement should really be a value in how to create more meaningful connections than just having something open.”

What does success ultimately look like for your business? “Ultimately, success looks like us being able to fit as many athletes as possible with our headgear and them knowing that they can come to us and know that we provide the best possible protection and that we give them a very simple way to understand Web3 and how to create meaningful social media interactions and build meaningful social media communities.”

What should investors or clients know about you—the person, your life experiences—that shows they can trust you? “I’m committed to them and I’m committed to the products we provide them and I’m committed to having a company that reflects our values.”

What challenges are there in offering both a headgear and an NFT service? “If you look at the surface of it, people will think that, but we’re using NFTs as a tool to market our headwear differently. What makes it fun and exciting is that those same tools—instead of just having a presence on Instagram, we now allow these NFTs and this platform to engage our customers in a much more fun and fulfilling way. It’s just technically challenging. It’s not really challenging and managing both, because it’s one in the same. »

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