John Golomb

John Golomb is one of the greatest boxing equipment designers of our time and a leading expert in sporting goods restoration. John is the former Product Designer, Industrial Engineer, and Consultant of the world-famous Everlast Sporting Goods Manufacturing Company, “the Choice of Champions,” located in the Bronx, New York from the 1960s to its closing in 2003. It was at Everlast, founded by his grandfather, Jack Golomb and brother, Morris Golomb, in 1912 on New York’s Lower East Side, and expanded and nurtured by his father Dan Golomb, that John received his family’s nearly 90 year legacy in leather crafting and design; mastering and honing his skills from the bottom up. “The Glove Doctor” brings almost 50 years of manufacturing, engineering, restoration, and design experience for baseball, football, and boxing equipment.

The Original

Glove Doctor

MEET

Everlast

When Jacob J. Golomb started Everlast his goal was to make boxing safer and give athletes confidence in the ring. More than a hundred years later, his ingenuity and innovations continue to support athletes around the world that still wear equipment inspired by him.

and The First family of Boxing

Sporting Legacy

Boxing was (and still is) a loose alliance of diverse associations, ownerships, managers, promoters, and boxers. Jack was an innovator, promoter, and publisher — he and his brothers saw an opportunity to make the most of this alliance. Jack was among a unique group of entrepreneurs who pioneered the American sporting goods industry in the first half of the 20th century. It was Everlast, which added legitimacy to a notoriously brutal and infamous sport. It was Everlast that made the sport more palatable to the general public. And it was the three generations of the Golomb Family’s equipment that took the hard, brutal edge off—instituting a measure of safety that in turn elevated the stature and status of the “sweet science.” Most of the innovations in boxing equipment came from Everlast, including safer boxing gloves, mouth guards, boxer’s shorts, headgear, ring padding, and groin protection.

Historic Beginnings

In 1912, encouraged by their immigrant father, a tailor and shop owner on New York City’s Lower East Side, 22-year-old Jacob J. Golomb, known as Jack, and his brother, 25-year-old, Morris Golomb, began a sporting goods company. The name they came up with for their high-quality products and service, said it all — EVERLAST. Despite its humble beginnings, the Everlast Sporting Goods Company, a small retail sporting goods store, carried both typical and more unusual sports equipment. This included baseball and football equipment as well as gear for skiing, fencing, gymnastics, and cricket, but it was boxing in which the company would become internationally renowned.

Barney Ross, Joe DiMaggio, Jack Golomb, Dan Golomb and Jack Dempsey

Jack Davis, Jack Golomb, and Morris Golomb

JACK DEMPSEY & JACK GOLOMB

There are many stories about Jack Dempsey and his years before he became champion when he was just another hardscrabble kid from the Midwest trying to cut his teeth as a boxer in the Big Apple. In 1917, a down and out Dempsey, showed up at the Everlast shop in search of headgear that would last more than 15 rounds of intensive training. The Golomb brothers already had an established reputation for developing, manufacturing, and selling the highest quality sporting goods, including headgear. Jack and Morris Golomb worked with Dempsey to customize their headgear to suit his needs. Golomb gave Dempsey the equipment for free because he had faith that he would be a great fighter one day. Jack Golomb helped a lot of fighters—that was his way. Later, as Heavyweight Champion of the World, Dempsey was eternally grateful and endorsed the Everlast product, something he would continue to do throughout his lifetime. During the early years of Everlast, both Dempsey and the great champion, Benny Leonard, along with countless other boxers, assisted in an advisory capacity for Everlast’s boxing equipment. It was this partnership of the boxers who shared their knowledge along with the Golomb know-how and ingenuity that helped make Everlast, the greatest of all time–The Choice of Champions!

International Acclaim

John’s father, Everlast CEO, David L. Golomb, known as Dan, took over the business after the passing of his father, Jack Golomb. Dan had been instrumental at Everlast for nearly 60 years. With his unique creativity and innovation, he transformed and expanded the production of gym mats, baseball bases, and exercise weights to name a few. During Dan’s tenure as the head of Everlast, boxing had its greatest era. He took the great name and made it into a worldwide icon.