Nokona
Leather ballgloves handcrafted in Nocona, Texas since 1926
✅ Made in USA
Our assessment
Company details
Where Nokona products are made
Nocona, Texas
Nokona’s factory sits at 917 US-82 in Nocona, Texas, where gloves are cut, laced, formed and finished by hand. The company runs public factory tours, so the making is not a marketing claim you have to take on faith.
American leather
Nokona built its reputation on premium hides — steerhide, kangaroo and its own Walnut Crunch leathers — cut and worked into full-grain gloves rather than assembled from thin, layered panels.
Hand lacing and repair
Each glove is laced and shaped by hand, and Nokona still relaces and repairs gloves at the same factory, which is why a well-kept Nokona often outlives several imported gloves.
Nokona states that its ballgloves are handcrafted in Nocona, Texas, and the company markets itself under a Made in America banner. Leather is a global commodity and Nokona sources premium hides from a range of tanneries, so the raw material is not always domestic even though the glove is made in Texas. A small number of apparel and accessory items sold alongside the gloves may be sourced differently, so check the individual listing if origin matters to you on anything other than a ballglove.
The story
Nokona was founded in 1926 in Nocona, Texas, a small town on the old Chisholm Trail cattle route, producing leather goods for a region built on ranching. In 1934 company president Bob Storey saw an opening in baseball and Nokona made its first ballglove.
The name itself is a piece of American trademark history: the company wanted to use the town’s name, Nocona, but it was already claimed, so it swapped the final letter and Nokona was born.
Through the 1960s and 1970s the American glove industry moved almost entirely overseas in search of cheaper labor. Nokona stayed in Texas. That decision cost the company scale and market share, but it preserved a craft — hand cutting, hand lacing, hand forming — that is now almost impossible to find in a mass-market glove.
Today Nokona still makes gloves at its Nocona factory, offers custom glove design, and runs a repair and relacing service for gloves that have been in a family for decades.
Why they matter
A ballglove is one of the few pieces of sporting equipment people keep for twenty or thirty years. It gets broken in, repaired, handed down. That makes it exactly the kind of product where domestic manufacturing and repairability matter more than a low sticker price.
Nokona is also a rare case of an entire category leaving the country and one company refusing to follow. Almost every glove sold in the United States is made in Asia. Nokona kept a few dozen skilled jobs in a town of about three thousand people, which is what American manufacturing looks like at human scale.
Buying a Nokona is a vote for that arrangement: a glove made by people whose names the company knows, in a factory you can walk through, with a repair bench waiting when the laces finally give out.
Shop Nokona products
Browse Nokona ballgloves and leather goods available now in the Buy American store.
Frequently asked questions
Where are Nokona gloves made?
At the company’s factory in Nocona, Texas, where gloves are cut, laced, formed and finished by hand. Nokona offers public factory tours.
How old is Nokona?
Nokona was founded in 1926 as a leather goods company and produced its first ballglove in 1934, making it one of the oldest sporting goods manufacturers still operating in the United States.
Why is the name spelled with a K?
The company is based in Nocona, Texas, but the spelling “Nocona” was unavailable as a trademark, so the founders changed the final letter to create Nokona.
Can a Nokona glove be repaired?
Yes. Nokona relaces and repairs gloves at the same Texas factory where they are made, which is a large part of why the gloves stay in families for decades.