Hey,
Here's my first impressions of the gear I got a few weeks back: a pair of 16oz sparring gloves, a headgear and a pair of 10oz bag gloves.
For reference I'm boxing for 3 years and I've got different gear from different brands: Winning, BoxeoTM, Phenom, HitNMove, Sting, Fairtex.
tl;dr
While it appears nice to get custom gear for cheap, there are important defects that would have prevented me from ordering if only I knew.
I want to support Matt in his efforts because he wants to provide good and innovative gear but I cannot recommend to buy in its current quality.
Long story
The process of ordering is great. Matt is a cool guy and has a great communication. Sadly first shipment failed because of a discrepancy of the infos I gave him and the infos of my Ebay account. I offered to pay the fees for the second shipment and I regret Matt accepted because I wasn't at fault.
- First contact: it smells and that's not right
Out of the box the gear looks good but there's a strong smell and that's not the smell of leather. I believe it's the smell of the products used to work the leather: it's not good to the nose and it's persistant.
It has been weeks since I got the gear. I cleaned it, I put it in the air. The smell is still present and it likely won't disappear.
This is a big defect in my book. None of my gloves or heagear has such a bad smell and I believe it's not compliant.
My gloves from BoxeoTM have a great leather smell that holds. This is the very opposite.
- The leather is thick enough but its appearance isn't great
It's seems there's two type of leathers used in the gloves: the one on the wrist strap is shiny while the other used for the rest of the gloves has a strange texture and feel.
It doesn't look the best but it's thick enough to last and that's the most important.
From my collection, only BoxeoTM provides a thicker leather but the gloves that have a thinner, lower quality leather still look better with the exception of Fairtex.
- Hand/partner protection has some flaws
This is not a minor concern and it should be adressed asap.
First, on the sparring gloves, there is cut in the foam on the back of the hand to allow to open the hand fully (tried to show it in pic 2). This is very problematic because if you don't fully shove the hand into the glove, you can position your knuckles at the level of the cut and feel them under the leather with very little protection.
Second, it's the foam on the right thumb on the bag gloves that does not cover the thumb entirely (pic 3). If I don't care my thumb can hit the bag without protection (and it hurts). This doesn't happen with bag mitts with no thumb protection due to thumb placement.
The tips of the fingers aren't protected by the foam either and poke through the leather but that's not a concern for protection.
- The gloves are very very difficult to dry and mold already appeared
I do sweat A LOT and my gear is always soaked at the end of my sessions. That's why I take good care drying them using a hair dryer with cool air and a fan.
I have no problem drying my gear except for the BoxeoTM: they need extra work to get the tip of the gloves dry.
Chegüi is another story: the water seems traped in some spot and particularly in the thumbs. The leather itself is easily very wet and it takes me extra extra efforts to dry the gloves.
Despite my protocol the gloves already show some mold (spots in pics 4 & 5) It only happened to me with other gloves in the very rare cases I couldn't dry my gloves properly or I let them in the bag for too long.
Also the ventilation holes in the gloves don't work AT ALL: no air exits when use the hair dryer.
- There's open foam in one of the glove (pic 6)
This can't be good.
- The headgear has a sewing (pic 7) that prints on my forhead
This is the stupidiest thing. I've got headgear from Winning, Phenom and Sting, of course there's only one piece of leather or fabric used for the forehead.
Here you see two pieces sewed at the middle and the sewing is hard.
First time sparring with this headgear I got tagged heavily on the forehead and the sewing litteraly printed: for 24h I had this vertical bar on the forehead that didn't make me look very intelligent.
Is it a feature to make you learn slipping? I'm not sure and I don't think it's necessary.
Also there's not enough holes on the chin strap, I can't secure the fit and must have someone add holes to it.
- But is it only problems? Of course not: Chegüi also provides good features
The defects are there, they should be corrected and they should not have been there in the first place. They make me regret my order but let's move on: there are great things about this gear.
Overall the gear looks good and that's nice.
You can fully open your hand and this is a great feature really.
Bag gloves offer a nice pop.
- Conclusion
Matt is a nice guy who deserves our support. I hope he works on the quality of his gear and end up providing gloves and headgears that match the best brands out there.
However good gear isn't cheap so he needs to increase his prices so he can increase the quality.