36. Growth of the Sport of Ninja with John Deary, Entrpreneur, Sponsor and Equipment Company Owner
Summary
Episode 35 - In this episode of the Farrell Sports Business podcast, the host Matt Farrell talks with John Deary, the founder of Deary's Gymnastics Supply. We discuss the evolution of Deary's Gymnastics Supply, his entry into the ninja sports industry, and the growth of ninja gyms across the U.S. He highlights the importance of business acumen in the youth sports sector, the role of sponsorship in developing the sport, and the potential for ninja sports to be included in the Olympics. Additionally, he shares insights on the USA Gymnastics Foundation and its mission to support athletes and the gymnastics community.
About the Farrell Sports Business Podcast
Interviews with news makers from sports business to talk leadership, entrepreneurship, industry news and their unique career paths. Hosted by Matt Farrell, President of Farrell Sports and former Golf Channel, USOPC, USA Swimming and Warner Bros.
Watch it on YouTube - www.youtube.com/@farrellsportsww
Listen in Podcasty Places - Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio and more
Matt Farrell (00:00)
Welcome to the Farrell Sports Business Podcast where we talk to people in the sports industry about what's going on, trends, businesses developing, and I'm the host, Matt
Okay. This week, we're going to go into an emerging sport. I would say it's safe to say most people watch gymnastics throughout 2024 in Paris, everything from the just off the chart success of the women's program with Simone Biles and others, and the really just how the men's team captured attention. And now you see Netflix series and Dancing with the Stars, but we're going to go to a segment of the sport.
that is absolutely growing and exploding, and it's the ninja aspect, especially among boys.
This week's guest is the owner of a gymnastics supply company that has been instrumental in not only sponsoring, but literally getting hands dirty to build apparatus to help spur the growth of the Ninja industry, local businesses, franchises, national and international competition. And it's absolutely exploding.
So we're going to look at the business side and growth of an emerging sport of Ninja.
My guest this week is a 31 year business owner of Deary's Gymnastics Supply and is also serving as the chair of the USA Gymnastics Foundation, entrepreneur, business person, and really one of the sparks that's growing the sport of ninja, John Deary
Matt Farrell (01:53)
Hey John, so great to see you and thanks for joining.
John Deary (01:57)
you're welcome. Happy to be here.
Matt Farrell (02:00)
Well, let's, I can't wait to jump into Ninja because I just have so much to learn on that topic on the sport and the business, but let's reset a little bit, give a little bit of context. Deary's gymnastics supply and that and, and, or other businesses that you're running. What, what is that business?
John Deary (02:20)
Well, Deary's Gymnastics Supply is a, as the name implies, a gymnastics supply company. We're pretty wide in what we do, but we're very focused in our lane. We stay in the gymnastics space, but we're wide in that we have a small manufacturing plant that builds gymnastics spring floors and protective padding. We have a retail business that sells to the consumer B2C with gymnastics grips and supplies. We have a much larger gymnastics equipment distribution company that distributes gymnastics equipment.
all
over the world. We have a service business that does a great job out in the field with a good-sized crew out there every day walking in gymnastics schools and public schools and servicing their gymnastics equipment needs. But we don't venture wide away from our gymnastics space. We stay right where we belong and don't venture into football or other major sports. We stay in our lane.
Matt Farrell (03:14)
So where did your lane start? Garage, startup, bootstrap? What was the beginning?
John Deary (03:23)
Yeah, all of that. I was a gymnast in college and there's the passion for the sport. And my family influence is very entrepreneurial. My grandfather and his brother were partners in Deary's Brothers Milk and that pushed down quickly into our family and we all worked super hard in all of those businesses which included restaurants and ice distribution, milk distribution, the pasteurization plants and all that. It just built a entrepreneurial and hard work ethic into our family, all of us.
family with 12 brothers and sisters, all of us somehow in business. So that kind of forced us that intuitively and it was just going to happen that I was going to be in business. So business school while I was in college and then the minute I graduated I took a job as a factory representative selling gymnastics equipment. Whatever I could do to help boost up and support the sport of gymnastics, I was there and I was going to do it. know part-time coaching was fun but it wasn't for me.
I wanted to be on the industry side of the sport. So here we go, and I built that all the way into that rep agency as an independent traveling the world of gymnastics and other sports that we were selling, morphed into a distribution company that I started in 1993, which was Theory's Gymnastics Supply.
and we've been running since then and we just kept adding the apartments. It started with just selling gymnastics equipment and then, yep, needed to be out in the field doing service work. It was me initially working out of my garage and my dad's garage building my first spring floor in his back in his garage.
and delivering it myself and all of that, bootstrapped all of it. And then just kept building on the departments, the demand for the retail business, customers calling, hey, can't you get me grips? Can't you get me wristbands or new shoes or whatever else was happening in the sport? So it kind of forced us to do it. And the manufacturing piece was the last piece that we added. It was also forced on us because people couldn't build custom product for us. The major manufacturers, the AIs, even the Nissins
of the day, couldn't handle our custom business timely or without mistakes. So it kind of forced me to build my own protective padding. Pits were becoming a big deal. Foam-filled pits were becoming everybody's gym had one, so we had to build all the custom pads to fit it. So we were forced to do it ourselves. And so we built a little small manufacturing facility in our original building and just went at it. Trial by fire, learned as we went, made our mistakes and made it all happen.
So that's kind of the road to Deary's Genesics Supply to today. 38 employees and enrolling quite nicely.
Matt Farrell (06:02)
That's great.
Well,
topic today is really as you identify forks in the road, this is a really interesting one in the ninja world. Most of us, I would venture to guess, have seen American Ninja Warrior on TV, but it's really turned into a booming local youth business as well. Where did the entry into ninja happen for you and what does it look like?
John Deary (06:34)
Yeah.
Yeah, it's an amazing story actually. In 2006, Drew Dreschel and Tom Alberti, business partners, Drew Dreschel was the TV star on the TV show American Ninja Warrior of the day. He was crushing it on that show and his popularity was huge. He walks in my office and he drops a drawing that he hand drew on the back of a cardboard of something he wanted built.
I didn't know who he was. didn't know the sport of ninja. Had never seen the TV show. I said, what is this? What are you doing? And Tom, his business partner is a long time gymnastics customer and owner of two gymnastics schools and has been buying product from us forever and also an alum of Southern Connecticut where I went to school. So kind of a buddy. I go, what are you doing? You know, what do I, what can I do for you? He goes, well, build this.
and we took a shot. I said okay I'll try it let's see what we can do.
So six months in, he comes in and he decides that he wants to be the first one to move the world championships out of somebody's gym. And he and Drew were going to be the partners to run the competition. And we needed me to build everything for that event. So it escalated extremely quickly from a small little manufactured product for him to sell to a major event that was on the radar way too soon, way
early for the industry's readiness. It was quite an interesting road.
Matt Farrell (08:13)
So, and I know this probably has multiple variations, but if, if I live in Colorado, if I walked into a ninja gym in Colorado or Connecticut or anywhere USA, can you characterize what is, what is it probably going to look like square footage and what type of, you know, equipment is in there? What, just maybe visualize it a little bit.
John Deary (08:39)
Yeah, it's evolving quickly, but depending on the market you're in, you know, the East Coast is doing phenomenal. Texas is doing phenomenal. The middle of the country is doing phenomenal. West Coast is coming quickly. Some of the smaller markets around the hubs of Ninja are still in their smaller 5,000 square foot initial spaces. All of the bigger city, the bigger markets where the sports growing quickly, they're all way up to 15 and 20,000 square foot.
spaces and they're very modern and very clean, very well organized and run. The sport came from eight years ago from 2016 when I started to where it is today very quickly maturing. Gymnastics took a lot longer. Gymnastics stayed kind of in the dark ages for much many more years, is that right? Much many? For many more years before they, you know, the coaches became business owners. Today the ninja coaches, although they're super passionate
about
the sport are figuring out the business piece faster than gymnasts did back in the day. And that's positive. So you're going to see, if you were, you know, any gym anywhere in the country, you're going to see a variety of the look and feel. Many of them want to look like the TV show, so you'll see a lot of aluminum truss. Many of them, sorry, see the benefit of...
more adaptable equipment. Where DGS came in, we invented and built a very adaptable rig. So our rigs look different than the TV show, but they're quickly adaptable to change out the obstacles. So it was a feature we built into what the industry needed.
And so you'll see, you know, each gym may look different and you're still going to find some homemade product in some gyms. People started with their little backyard type rigs with the four by four posts of wood and up went the horizontals and they would run with that. But that's quickly being phased out. They're all expanding up beyond that and moving to manufactured, professionally manufactured, engineered, safer products.
Matt Farrell (10:48)
So what are you seeing age-wise, boys, girls, what's happening there?
John Deary (10:56)
it's tremendous. It's about a 70-30 split men to women. At the younger ages, the level of the sport is pretty equal. You get to be about eight, nine years old, the men start to outweigh the women in level of abilities. Well, maybe a little later, maybe 10 or 12, but they get stronger, faster, and although the ladies can compete with them up to that point as far as the level of the sport, and then it starts to separate.
The activity level, the number of kids doing it, it's about a 70-30 split, both recreationally and at the competitive world. But the women are amazing. They're in their lane doing their thing and it's exciting to watch what's happening.
Matt Farrell (11:43)
I saw an online, a Sports Illustrated article that I believe it was 2023 that quoted that there was about 400 Ninja gyms out there. Has that number held? What's the footprint across the U.S. look like?
John Deary (11:54)
Yeah.
Yeah, way more than that. The 400 number is not even close. Our database shows a dramatic number larger than that. More than double of the number of Ninja-only clubs. But then my opportunities for sales of Ninja equipment at the university level, the high school, the public school level, the YMCA, summer camps, any activity. The trampoline park model has added Ninja as a
piece of it. If they started with just trampolines, they no longer just have trampolines. They've taken out a number of plants of tramps and added in Ninja Warrior rigs and they have a pay-for-play model for Ninja. The opportunities are very large now. It's a nice industry to be working in.
Matt Farrell (12:48)
It was just fascinating where you talked about people coming in as a business first, because so many youth sports, whether it be swimming, I do some work in baseball, somebody opens a batting cage because they love baseball, and then I'll figure out the business piece second. And you're really seeing that flipped on its head a little bit, it sounds like.
John Deary (13:13)
Yeah, the passion for the sport is there. Most of the owners initially were coaches and athletes who just love it and want to be there all day every day. But the business mind has, they're smarter. They're just smarter. There's more information available to them. They've learned how to work with their bankers. They've learned how to borrow money to make it happen or bootstrap as best they can with family. But they're not having the troubles finding the money to open their gyms like the gymnast did in the 70s and early 80s.
It is a different playing field and I think that from the financial side they're paying attention with much more detail than others have in the past. It's a good positive thing. It's going to continue to help keep the sport and the industry healthy. We're happy about it.
Matt Farrell (14:01)
make sense.
So, you know, when we think about sports and sponsors coming into a sport, I would say by and large, you know, Marriott or Toyota or whoever comes into an existing sport and tries to leverage that. And I'm sure that's happening in Ninja, but with you and Deary's gymnastics supply, you're, you're coming in. And I mean this with
like investing in the sport to grow it, you're helping, you're not just sponsoring an event, you're actually helping form the foundation of the sport itself.
John Deary (14:40)
Yeah.
Yeah, in 20...
I think 17 or 18, 2017 I think, was I went down to the World Championships for the World Ninja League. was the National Ninja League at the time. And I witnessed their World Championships, what they were calling their world event. And it was held in somebody's gym. And I sat in the waiting room of that gym with people on either side of me squeezing me, parents watching their children compete. And there's a little window that I could see inside the gym. And there were thousands of athletes.
that were going to run through there that weekend and they would shuffle parents in to the seating and shuffle parents out every hour so they could see their kids get close up. I witnessed that going this has to change the sport will not grow if we can't hold our world event in an arena or in a convention center with with all the amenities that you can have to grow an event like that. So I stuck my foot out and
stuck my foot in my mouth, I should say, because I told the director of the league that I would put them in an arena the next year. And I would provide everything that they needed to do that. And then every piece of equipment, every protective pad, every mat, every obstacle, all the rigging, in my head I'm thinking, okay, that's one truckload and that's probably one rig that can handle, you know, 1,200 athletes in a weekend.
Matt Farrell (15:46)
Ha ha.
John Deary (16:09)
Well, that escalated in about three months to, you know, 2,000 athletes and six truckloads of equipment and a very different investment in the industry. But we did it. We went for it. And we've been doing it ever since. From that year forward, six years in, we've handled their and other leagues, world and state, regional and national events, providing equipment for them as their sponsor.
But it has made a dramatic improvement to the sport. It set the bar at a higher level. It upped the game of the competitive world of ninja. I think it probably advanced it four or five years faster than it could have gotten there. Proud and happy to have done it. Pocketbook was getting beat to hell, but we think it was the right move.
Matt Farrell (16:58)
And, but, you know, just from
our past conversations, you, you're actually, well, won't put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you're very open if not, you know, inviting other sponsors to come in. You're not trying to hoard it all to yourself. Do you see that as kind of the next step, next plateau?
John Deary (17:13)
Yeah.
I do. need help. There are so many requests for events now. I can't build fast enough. Facility is almost at its max. Our staffing is at its max until I expand. And the dollar amount spent is becoming the point where we have to pay attention to that number for the size of the industry. We went much faster than the industry could support, but I'm six years in and that investment and we keep investing about the same each year and the return
has to be better.
as far as the total industry. So another player coming in helping would be dramatically helpful to me to continue to grow the level of what's needed from the equipment side. But for other sponsors to come into the industry, the sport is ready. The athletes are ready to present. For the first time this week, I got a phone call from an athlete agent saying, hey, I'm representing one of your team DGS team members.
want to have a conversation about how you're paying her and what you're to pay her and what she can do for you that she's not doing for you now. So here we go. That's a start. That's one of the big starts. So yes, the industry is ready for more sponsors to come in.
Matt Farrell (18:37)
Well, I mean, the secret sauce of youth sports from a sponsorship standpoint, in my opinion, always has really just been the core of loyalty, engaged families who are spending time at these events. And it's just a very high quality audience. And so it sounds like now you're talking about events with 1,000 athletes or 2,000 athletes. That's significant.
John Deary (18:57)
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's similar to what you see at any soccer tournament or any baseball tournament where all the parents are flocking to the same city, filling up the hotels, spending money in the restaurants. It's that model and it's happening. Even their regional championships will have, you know, six or seven hundred athletes. There's state events. their states are big enough, they're not multiple state events. They're good size events. So yeah, the event piece is coming. And they're getting better at reaching out to the local
sponsors to help and reaching out to the hotels for deals for kickbacks and all of that. That's all happening in the industry already. It's good.
Matt Farrell (19:47)
I want to maybe circle back to the, local side of it. whatever the number of clubs is hundreds is, are you seeing that be individual businesses? Are you seeing franchises develop? How's that? How's that growth happening?
John Deary (20:05)
You have both. A lot of individuals still opening, independents. Many multiple locations in many of these gyms now, which is very positive. The size of the space is, they're up in the game from 8, 10,000 square feet up to 15,000 20,000 square feet, which is amazing, right, that that's happening. And they're really just focusing in ninja. They're not adding all the other multi-sports. They can do some parkour in the mix. They can try some a little bit of the trampoline.
leaning
piece but most of them do not. They stay in their lane because they know what they're good at. So that's good growth and there is some real money coming into the industry. There's a couple of bigger franchise operations that are doing it at a higher level and they're successful. The ninja nations of the world do it extremely well and there's multiple of them handling it on a national level not even just all in the same
market. You know, they're handling east coast, west coast operations, no problem. So it's good. It's good.
Matt Farrell (21:12)
So with your personal roots in, in gymnastics and other, we're, we're very accustomed to a local to state, to regional, to national, to international type structure. Are you starting to see that for lack of a better term, formality of the sport develop of where, where do I go from step a to B to C?
John Deary (21:37)
Yep, it's happening. All the leagues have their local comps, then they have their regional comps. You have to qualify. You have to qualify all around the nationals or worlds. That structure is built. The leagues are improving every year. The events are improving every year. The families are loving it. You have a chance to be a state champion, a regional champion, and a world champion. And it's a true world event. Last year at Worlds, both events had eight or ten different countries represented in quite a number
I think there were 80 athletes from France and probably 60 from Israel the last year's World's Championships So it was it's it's growing at that rate at a nice rate So yes, the structure is built and on the international scene I don't know what you know about what's happening with the Olympic movement and ninja but the modern pentathlon has removed the horses from the event and added a head-to-head ninja warrior race The TV show is also
head-to-head racing as one of the formats to the staged events that they typically air. And the head-to-head racing is super exciting. Imagine a hundred-yard dash with seven obstacles in the way and you're sprinting through them. The top athletes make it, it's a flow for them. They're so darn good at it. It's super exciting and it's a dive to the finish. It's unbelievable. Where do you see it? It's exciting. So the Olympic movement, the change to the modern pentathlon,
Matt Farrell (23:04)
great.
John Deary (23:07)
on
couple of reasons. The horses were super expensive and was excluding some countries and wasn't getting the viewership that they wanted. So coming in with Ninja Warrior, which has a high viewership, the TV show is continuing to help the excitement around the sport. So they've chosen the OCR piece to it, the obstacle course race as part of the Pentathlon. And there's rumblings around because it's in LA in 28 that and the show
is produced and aired from there that they would also have a standalone test event for Ninja Warrior stages. So they could do a staged event like you see on TV in that similar format in the Olympics as a test event. So we may get lucky and have two situations where Ninja Warrior shows up in our life. One is for sure is happening. So that has spawned a hell of an organization at the international level. The OCR people are crushing
it and the organization that Ian Anderson runs at the Multisport Director of the USA Pentathlon Multisport, they're crushing it. They're doing so well with it. We're excited. The national team for USA is amazing. The kid just won a major championships in think in Dubai recently. So we're looking really good. It's kind of exciting.
Matt Farrell (24:32)
that's really cool to hear. I didn't know those pieces about LA and those possible paths. So I want to come back to maybe traditional gymnastics a little bit and, you know, broad question, but obvious success of USA Gymnastics in Paris this year.
John Deary (24:39)
Yeah.
Matt Farrell (24:56)
athletes with series on Netflix, athletes on Dancing with the Stars. You know, maybe this is a two-part question. One is DGS and one was gymnastics with maybe a lowercase G. What does a year like this mean in your business?
John Deary (25:14)
Well, from the top line, the revenue line, it's all positive. The numbers are up. I have since 1980, 11 Olympic cycles of data and I know it extremely well. I've been living it. And our, on the industry side, our bump comes right after the Olympics, not before. You get a lead up to excitement about the Olympics, but everybody wants to open their gym and spend money on equipment and buy the hard goods right after the Olympics because now they can run.
And so we see a 20, 25, 30 percent bump every Olympic cycle and it never goes in the other direction. It always goes, bumps, stays, bumps, stays. It's the industry just keeps growing. I think the, you know, when super recessions happened a couple of times in the cycle we had slow cyclical downturns but typically our businesses, the industry of gymnastics is growing. It's very positive and I anticipate coming out
LA
the same. I don't see a change to that at all. The interest in gymnastics is huge and of course all those extras, all the let's say the B to C side of it, which is your kids all excited about watching the Dancing with Stars amazing athletes doing their thing, also want to buy grips to do gymnastics. You know it's helping all aspects of our business. It's very exciting. And the number of kids in the clubs is up. My sister's in her 40th year
with a gymnastics school here in town and her business sees the same cycles and right now she's overrun, has waiting lists, doesn't have enough coaches, not enough space to fit all the kids. It's a very typical problem in the gymnastics industry. They all have waiting lists, all the clubs. It's very exciting.
Matt Farrell (27:05)
Well, that's great. You and I met through your work with the USA Gymnastics Foundation. And so you've been on that board, I think, three years recently became the chair. What are you doing with the USA Gymnastics Foundation?
John Deary (27:22)
Well, the gymnastics foundation has, with the help of Debbie Hessey, who's our executive director, an amazing woman, will be super successful because of her. And with your help to to build the mission and vision of the organization, thank you by the way, you amazing work in that project, we're so helpful, so thankful for what you did for us. But the foundation is transitioned to a fundraising and philanthropic organization that needs
to
support the athletes, the community of gymnastics, and USA Gymnastics. The foundation started in 1980 after the Olympics in maybe 84, I'm sorry, I'm not quite sure of which year, but the monies that came out of the Olympics, 84 money came into the foundation and it was quite a bit of it. And over the years, through the tours and through whatever events were making them money, TV money or event money was being poured into the foundation, so the coffers got quite rich.
Matt Farrell (28:05)
84.
John Deary (28:22)
and thank God because as the time came with Larry Nassar incidences and the mess that they were in with with bankruptcy that money survived USA Gymnastics and really survived the NGB the sport that was you know the most watched sport in the Olympics it had to survive it has to be handled correctly and
So the foundation now has to go fill those coffers and pick up some of the new initiatives that we're looking to do. Things like possibly build a national training center, possibly help inner underserved communities, add gymnastics programming, things that we can do to help the top line elite athletes on our national team perform better and train better, support them financially, support them with training center or coaches or whatever we can do.
Imagine
what we can do with a lot of money. You start thinking about the initiatives you can spend money on to improve things. We believe we can do it. And as the chair, my task is to just kind of steer the ship to fundraising. We've added an amazing group of people to the board. All will bring a level of expertise to fundraising and helping us introduce it to the people who will help.
Matt Farrell (29:35)
Definitely.
John Deary (29:42)
So very excited about the opportunity and honored to do it. You know, when the call comes from USA Gymnastics for that kind of an opportunity, I can't say no. So I'll do my best.
Matt Farrell (29:52)
that's
great. Well, with you, with Debbie, and with a dream team board, it's set up to be successful. But I want to give you the last word, John. Anything I didn't ask you, shameless plug that you would want to hit.
John Deary (29:58)
Yeah.
Well, shameless plug.
I don't know. I think that I like to say this statement. Imagine if every kid in the world did a cartwheel. Would there be world peace because of it? Every kid would have joy in the sport of gymnastics or any sport. Imagine if every kid could play a sport in the world. There would be no reason to fight, no reason to hate. I believe sport is a way to happiness and joy and everybody should have the opportunity. So anything we can do.
help. And if you're listening and there's anything you can do to help support, please do so in any way.
Matt Farrell (30:40)
I love it. That is perfect. I'm a newfound fan and follower. I will not be a participant in Ninja, but it's just fascinating where that sport and activity for everybody's going. So John, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.
John Deary (31:00)
You're welcome. It was fun.
Comments