Our Story

It started with a pile of broken gloves

One Saturday morning I grabbed my gardening gloves off the shelf and found holes in the pointer and middle finger of the right hand. Again.

I looked over at the bucket in the corner. Four or five pairs of gloves, all with the same problem. Fingertip holes, right hand, every single one.

I grabbed the least broken pair and kept going. Because that's what you do.

Then I posted about it

I took a photo of that pile and posted it in a Canberra gardening group on Facebook. Asked if anyone else was going through gloves this fast. Expected a couple of replies.

Got 37 comments.

Every single one said the same thing. The fingertips go first. No one could recommend a glove that actually lasted. Someone even coined a term for it: fingertip rot.

That's when I realised, this isn't just my problem. This is everyone's problem.

So I went looking for a solution

I checked reviews for every garden glove brand I could find. Almost all of them had the same complaints. Fingertips wearing through. Seams splitting. Gloves that look fine on the shelf but fall apart under real use.

So I built one

I'm Carolyn. I'm a gardener, a first-time entrepreneur and, at the time, lost my job and was studying horticulture part-time. I had no background in manufacturing or product development. What I had was a very clear problem and 37 comments telling me I wasn't the only one with it.

I partnered with an industrial designer and a manufacturer, and we got to work engineering a glove around the actual failure points - not shelf appeal.

It didn't go perfectly

Our first prototype failed. After 40 hours of field testing with a professional gardener, a hole appeared. At the fingertip.

The one thing I set out to fix was the first thing that broke.

I didn't hide it. I fixed it. We went back, reinforced the seams, adjusted the stitching pattern, and tested again.

That's what prototyping is for.

The Foundation is the result

Two professional landscapers tested it for 40+ hours each across chainsaw work, jackhammering, hard digging, turf removal, and more. They loved it.

180+ Australian gardeners shaped it through surveys and feedback before a single pair was made.

It's not perfect - no glove is. But it's engineered to last. And when you put it on, you'll notice the difference immediately.

This is just the beginning

We're in our pilot phase. 100 pairs, launched in March 2026. Every pair that goes out the door teaches us something for V2.

If you're tired of gloves breaking on you, you're exactly who we built this for.

Carolyn
Founder, Bare Dirt Co.