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Could non-leather Zoa make the majors in sports before fashion?

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Two high-tech sporting goods pioneers think so

COOPERSTOWN,  N.Y.;  CHENNAI,  India––If sports are the testing ground for style, then Modern Meadow Inc.,  makers of Zoa brand cultured leather,  should be pleased as punch with reader response to the ANIMALS 24-7 feature article No animals skinned to make new Zoa “biofabricated” leather, published on October 9,  2017.
Two of the first 27 readers––at least––were groundbreaking makers of high-tech sports equipment.  Both were enthusiastic about the potential for Zoa in some of the most demanding of sports applications,  and promptly wrote to say so.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Could be a contender

Aiming for Zoa to debut commercially in high-end accoutrements,  Modern Meadow introduced their cultured leather product at first a sneak preview in SoHo,  then a display at the Museum of Modern Art,  but perhaps a Yankee Stadium or Madison Square Garden debut would have made a bigger splash.
From baseball caps,  knickers,  bloomers,  pedal-pushers,  and jockey briefs to sports bras,  running shoes,  hockey sweaters,  baggy shorts and hoodies,  success on the playing field has presaged success in fashion for as long as fashionable clothing has been a mass-manufactured and marketed item––and that bodes well for Zoa,  even if it was not introduced in quite the right place with the right sort of fanfare.

The first Carpenter Trade glove used in a major league game entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2011, along with second baseman Roberto Alomar, pitcher Bert Blyleven, and executive Pat Gillick.

“Future materials of choice”

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention,”  e-mailed Scott Carpenter to ANIMALS 24-7. Carpenter,  under the business name Carpenter Trade,  hand-manufactures custom-fitted nylon microfiber baseball gloves just a few blocks from the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Each of Carpenter’s gloves commands a price roughly equivalent to outfitting an entire team with conventional leather gloves––and the present handful of pro-level users appear to be unanimous so far in agreeing that improved performance makes the outlay worthwhile.
“I had heard about Modern Meadow’s earlier attempts to make engineered ‘meat,'”  Carpenter said,  “but was not aware about this ‘cultured leather,'”  before learning about it from ANIMALS 24-7.

“I’ll be inquiring”

‘I have always believed that the future materials of choice for baseball gloves will be man-made,”  Carpenter wrote.  “Technology is constantly innovating ever-evolving alternatives while,  relatively speaking,  traditional leather is changing little or not at all.  It’s just a matter of time that man-made alternatives start to outperform traditional leather.  They already outperform traditional leather in key areas,  which is why I’ve had success making the first non-leather gloves ever to be used in major league baseball games.
“I’ll be inquiring about this material,”  Carpenter finished.

Chinny Krishna

“Rocket scientist” likes the idea

The other maker of high-tech sports equipment who quickly responded to the ANIMALS 24-7 coverage of Zoa was Chinny Krishna,  of Chennai,  India.  A son of pioneering Indian aviators Usha and V. Sundaram,  who in 1959 founded the Blue Cross of India animal charity at their home,  Krishna grew up to head the Blue Cross of India for more than 50 years,  helping to introduce the techniques of neuter/return animal population control, high-volume dog and cat sterilization, and saturation anti-rabies vaccination to the world.

Jimmy Connors and the T2000.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Along the way Krishna became known as the only rocket scientist in animal welfare,  because Aspick Inc.,  the engineering and manufacturing company he founded in 1974 with the proceeds from selling a motorcycle,  went on to build radio telescopes and robotic satellite arms for the Indian space program.

First,  though,  Krishna helped to revolutionize tennis.

Transitioning tennis

The beginning of the revolution came when the Wilson sporting goods company in 1968 introduced the first steel-framed racket,  the T2000.  Before that,  for at least four centuries,  tennis racket frames had always been made from various combinations of wood and bamboo.
“The T2000 racket gained legendary status after tennis great Jimmy Connors adopted it as his own,”  wrote Gurvinder Singh Gandu in The Evolution of the Tennis Racket,  published online by Complex Media.

Jimmy Connors today.
(Facebook photo)

The combination of Connors’ then-unique two-handed swing with the resilience of steel made him practically unbeatable from 1974 to 1977.

The aluminum racket

Trying to find the racket recipe that could enable Connors’ professional rivals to stop his then-record winning streak in top tournament play,  the Weed tennis racket company introduced the first professional-level aluminum racket in 1975.  Another racket maker,  Howard Head,  brought out a much more popular aluminum racket a year later.
Aluminum rackets made their mark in professional tennis only briefly,  as graphite frames arrived circa 1980.  But Krishna had already made his contribution,  even before Weed and Head got into the game.

Vijay Merchant

“In 1973,”  Krishna recalled to ANIMALS 24-7,   “I was manufacturing one of the earliest aluminum alloy tennis racquets. As an ethical vegan, I used the best synthetic strings available 44 years ago,  but was stuck as far as the handle wrap went.  All high quality grips were leather at that time.”

Cricket great helped

Indeed,  rattan––still often used,  now in combination with technologically advanced plastics––was the only other grip material that had gained any favor,  and as of the mid-1970s was widely viewed as a material of the past.
“I contacted Vijay Merchant,  a director of Bohr Industries Ltd.,  manufacturers of some of the best vinyl rexines in India,”  Krishna continued.  “Vijay Merchant was a Parsee and one of the cricketing greats of India,”  with the second highest international test match batting average in cricket history. “He sent me some rolls of Bohr rexine material with a letter which read:  ‘As a vegetarian myself,  I greatly appreciate what you have written.  However, in my opinion, I can see no chance of any synthetic material with the sweat-absorbing properties of leather for tennis racquet grips.  Please do try the material I am sending and let me know.'”

Synthetic grips took over

Krishna took Merchant’s suggestion.  “Within a few years, some of the finest tennis racquet grips were all synthetic!” Krishna wrote,  concluding in reference to Zoa,  “We are,  today,  in the midst of some of the most profound changes that mankind has ever seen.”
Affirmed Natalie Williams in a “Vegan guide to tennis,”  published by VegNews in September 2015,  “Many,  if not most,  players use a synthetic grip or overgrip on the handles of their rackets.  A leather option exists,  but comes at a greater cost.  Some players have leather under their overgrips,  but many just use synthetic.  That blue Tourna Grip you see all the pros sporting is vegan,  just like non-leather grips from Wilson,  Prince,  Gamma, and others.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Basketball & football

Basketball and football may also be well on their way toward a vegan revolution,  despite a well-publicized fiasco in 2006 when the National Basketball League briefly introduced,  then withdrew,  an all-synthetic ball similar to those already used in many high-level amateur and overseas professional leagues.
NBA basketballs and National Football League footballs still use outer coverings of Chromexcel leather,  made by the Horween Leather Company of Chicago.  Founded by Isadore Horween in 1905,  the company transitioned to specializing in leather for sports equipment under his sons Ralph and Arnold Horween,  both All-Americans at Harvard University and later stars for the Racine/Chicago Cardinals of the early NFL.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Polyurethane leather

Except at the top professional level,  explains Joseph Goodwin at http://www.designlife-cycle.com/basketball/,  “Recreational basketballs are created with synthetic leather covers such as polyurethane leather.  Polyurethane leather and other alternatives provide additional durability for play outside,  as well as weather/sunlight resistance that leather simply does not exhibit.  On top of this,  it is much cheaper for the companies to produce,  adding to the paradigm shift from real leather to synthetic leather over the past half century.  Polyurethane leather,”  not always a vegan product,  “is made from a base of fibers such as leather scraps or nylon/polyester all sealed together with polyurethane.  There is an additional thin polyurethane layer on the surface.  The polyurethane creates a surface that mimics the moisture absorbing effects of a real leather basketball.

“A nylon/polyester carcass is positioned in between the bladder and the cover of the basketball,”  Goodwin adds,  “in order to help maintain the shape of the ball and add needed durability.”

Zoa culture samples.
(Modern Meadow photo)

Zoa could replace leather covering

Footballs are mostly made by the same process.

As leather scraps are increasingly expensive,  driving up the price of polyurethane leather, basketball and football makers have been energetically seeking and testing alternatives. Zoa,  which is in effect “real” leather except that it is grown from yeast,  not taken from an animal,  appears able to fill the bill.

But is Zoa really vegan?  Objects longtime Beauty Without Cruelty/India chief executive Diana Ratnagar,  on the BWC web site,  “Biofabrication is a process that produces a material that has the same flexibility,  smooth texture and elasticity of leather through a tissue engineering technique,  but it is not ‘completely animal-free’ as claimed by the inventors of Modern Meadow.  The lab grows leather in two weeks from skin cells that produce collagen.  It is falsely claimed,”  Ratnagar alleged,  that ‘no animals are harmed’ because via a biopsy on a living animal, skin cells are taken from which leather is grown in the lab.”

Josh Tetrick & his chief cultured meat quality advisor.  (Facebook photo)

Obsolete understanding

Ratnagar,  however,  appears to have an obsolete understanding of the biofabrication process.

“You could get all the animal cells we need from a feather,”  Hampton Creek founder Josh Tetrick explained to ANIMALS 24-7 in July 2017,  after similar allegations were made about the Hampton Creek effort to use biofabrication to produce “real” chicken without raising and killing a bird.

“You just cut off the quill tip of a naturally discarded feather, and there is all the cell structure we need,”  Tetrick said.  “Then we grow the product in a culture developed entirely from plant extracts.  You could pick up all the animal cells we need just by picking up the shed feathers at a sanctuary.”

Biofabrication as Modern Meadow does it to make Zoa would most likely begin with flakes of dandruff,  Tetrick suggested,  though Modern Meadow has not disclosed all of the details of the process.

Baseball gloves

The portion of No animals skinned to make new Zoa “biofabricated” leather that piqued Scott Carpenter’s interest,  and Chinny Krishna’s,  was our mention that if by any chance Zoa products need reinforcement to wear as well as leather in products that receive high-stress use,  such as shoes and car seats,  Carpenter may have the answer.

For the benefit of readers who only peruse the sports section,  the remainder of this article replicates the concluding portion of No animals skinned to make new Zoa “biofabricated” leather.

“From Carpenter’s perspective,”  working out of a small shop near the Baseball Hall of Fame,  “leather itself was an obstacle between players and better performance,”  reported Steven Kutz of MarketWatch.com in 2014.  “Carpenter had made shoes and sneakers for himself with synthetic material. He thought such material could improve on leather because it is stronger,  lighter and more breathable.”

Non-leather has already made the majors

The first non-leather baseball glove used in the major leagues debuted with pitcher Brian Gordon of the New York Yankees,  who had already played briefly in the big leagues,  on June 16,  2011.  Another pitcher,  Michael Schwimer,   had introduced Gordon to non-leather gloves when they were minor league teammates in 2010.  Schwimmer debuted for the Phillies with his non-leather glove later in the 2011 season.

Gordon and Schwimer both used Carpenter Trade gloves hand-crafted from nylon microfiber.   Neither lasted long in the major leagues,  just parts of two seasons each,  during which Gordon had a won/lost record of 0-1 while Schwimer was 3-2.  Similar gloves have now been used by at least seven other U.S. professional players,  and at least one professional player in Southeast Asia.

Scott Carpenter at work. (Carpenter Trade photo)

$560 vs. free

More major leaguers probably would use Carpenter Trade gloves except for the economic factors:  Carpenter Trade gloves start at $560.  Most major league players get their gloves for free as part of endorsement contracts.

Ten ounces lighter than conventional leather baseball gloves,  the vegan Carpenter Trade gloves meet the strength and safety requirements of Major League Baseball Inc.,  meaning that they can stand up to hundreds of impacts of baseballs traveling at close to 100 miles per hour.

Scott Carpenter.
(Carpenter Trade photo)

Non-leather vinyl baseball and softball gloves were introduced for recreational play by several makers circa 1990,  but had a notoriously short useful lifespan and are now sold only for use by children who are just beginning to play ball.

“Quality of synthetics then was awful”

“The quality of synthetics back then was awful compared to now,”   Carpenter told ANIMALS 24-7 after Gordon and Schwimmer made their brief major league marks.   “I believe the tipping point for synthetics in professional baseball gloves is now–it wasn’t plausible earlier.”

Merritt & Beth Clifton

Recently Scott Carpenter has experimented with combining the costly nylon microfiber components of baseball gloves,  which flex the most and absorb the hardest impacts,  with less expensive materials for the palms and backs.

Zoa could become one of those materials––and nylon microfibers could in turn reinforce Zoa in almost any high-stress application.

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Comments

  1. Dr. S. Chinny Krishna says

    Thank you for this article as a follow up on the first one regarding Zoa. I am not a rocket scientist as you have said but my company, Aspick Engineering, was indeed a major contributor to the Space programme of the Government of India and supplied many critical items including some of the very large dish antennae for the ground tracking stations.

    We had also supplied the dish for the Satellite Instruction Television Experiment (SITE) in 1975 where NASA’s ATS 5 satellite was used to feed the thousands of Front End Receivers in the villages in India to help farmers with information on what to plant and when, as well as a market for their produce. Arthur C Clarke called SITE “The Greatest Communications Experiment in History” I am delighted to add that the antenna supplied by us is still fully functional 42 years later, though we had only expected a 15-year useful life.