Summary: Shoulder Recovery for Overhead Athletes
Over 50% of overhead athletes experience shoulder pain or injury during their careers, and the root cause is often dysfunction in the subscapularis: a deep shoulder muscle that no existing recovery tool can safely reach. The ScapStick gives athletes safe, controlled leverage to target this muscle directly, for both pre-game activation and post-game recovery. In under a year, SCAP Athletics has sold out two production runs, placed product in over twenty Division I programs and 10 Major League Baseball organizations, and accumulated over 2 million organic social views, all without spending a dollar on paid acquisition.
Context
The at-home athletic recovery tools market is $6.5 billion today and is projected to exceed $10 billion by 2033. The shoulder-focused subcategory alone represents $900 million to $1.2 billion in annual spending, with no dominant brand and no product purpose-built for subscapularis recovery.
There are approximately 4 to 6 million addressable overhead athletes in the United States across baseball, softball, tennis, swimming, football, gymnastics, golf, and weightlifting. Shoulder injury rates reach over 50% across these sports, and up to 90% at higher competition levels.
The cost of a single shoulder surgery, including rehabilitation and lost playing time, ranges from $30,000 to $80,000. The subscapularis, unreachable by any existing recovery tool without injury risk, is a contributing factor in the majority of cases.
Athletes currently improvise by jamming baseballs, lacrosse balls, and barbell ends into their ribs seeking relief. Wrong pressure applied to the wrong spot risks nerve damage, microtears, and permanent compensation patterns that compound over time.
SCAP Athletics has sold 425 or more units across two sold-out production runs at a $69.99 retail price, generating approximately $13,970 in gross revenue to date at a 74.3% gross margin.
At 5% penetration of the addressable overhead athlete market at a $70 average order value, the revenue opportunity in the beachhead segment alone is $14 million to $21 million. That figure expands to over $30 million as physical therapy clinics and retail channels open up.
Liberal Arts Founder Profiles
Nicholas Dargel | Co-Founder, CEO | Wesleyan
Nicholas is a collegiate baseball player (infield/catcher) and founder who experienced subscapularis dysfunction firsthand. After struggling to find a tool that effectively targeted deeper shoulder structures, he built SCAP to solve the problem himself. He launched and scaled SCAP’s content engine from scratch, generating 615K+ organic TikTok views and building early traction within the overhead athlete community.
Prior to SCAP, Nicholas founded and scaled a $200K ARR landscaping business, managing employees, P&L, operations, and customer acquisition while balancing varsity athletics and academics. He is a double major in Economics and Spanish, combining analytical rigor with strong communication skills.
Adam Cardini | Co-Founder, COO | Auburn University
Adam Cardini is the Founder and COO of SCAP Athletics and a student executive at Auburn University’s Harbert College of Business, actively involved in the university’s entrepreneurship and sales organizations.
Prior to building SCAP, he co founded and scaled DCD Labor, a New Jersey based landscaping business that reached approximately $200,000 in annual recurring revenue, where he led outbound sales, pricing, operations, and customer acquisition.
Andrew DiBiasio | Co-Founder, Product Engineer | Wesleyan
Andrew is a collegiate baseball player at Wesleyan University, majoring in Engineering and is part of Wesleyan’s 3+2 engineering program. He will attend Columbia next. He leads product design at SCAP, ensuring every product is durable, safe, and engineered for high-performance use. Andrew oversees structural integrity, material selection, and compliance with patent standards, translating athlete needs into technically sound, scalable products.
Quick Facts
HQ: Wesleyan University
Employees: 2 co-founders, 1 employee
Sector & Business Model: Sports Recovery / DTC Physical Product
Unit Economics: $18 COGS → $69.99 retail → 74% gross margin
Revenue to Date: $16,505 gross (Apr–Dec 2025), 425+ units · 2 sold-out runs · selling 55 units per week on average
Sales Channels: Shopify (83%), TikTok Shop, Amazon, In-Person Booths (17%)
Patent Status: Provisional filed · Full utility patent in progress
Target Raise: $200,000 pre-seed; $50K from Trivium investors
Consumer Traction: 2M+ organic views · 5,200+ followers · 50K+ likes · 20K+ unique visitors · +17% WoW growth
Market Size: At-home recovery tools: $6.5B → $10B+ by 2033 | Shoulder-focused subcategory: $900M–$1.2B | 4–6M addressable U.S. overhead athletes
Traction: 22,000+ unique website visitors (17.8% returning) · 3,000+ social followers · 615K+ views · 24,000+ likes · +16% WoW community growth.
Initial Diligence
Strengths
Authentic Founder-Market Fit: All three founders are competitive overhead athletes who experienced the problem personally. Nicholas's subscapularis dysfunction is what triggered the company.
Exceptional Unit Economics: 74% gross margin on a physical product gives significant room for customer acquisition spend while staying profitable.
Organic Traction: Reaching 21 Division I programs and 10 MLB organizations with zero paid acquisition reflects product-market fit at the highest levels of the sport. Moreover, reaching an audience of 615,000 people without spending a dollar is significant.
Category Creation: Nobody owns subscapularis recovery in a $6.5–10B market. Therabody and Hyperice dominate general recovery but have not built a product that addresses this specific need. SCAP has a window to define and own the category before larger players notice the traction.
Multi-Product Roadmap: The Scap Revlo handheld tool, Version 2 attachment heads, and merch pipeline demonstrate that the founding team is thinking about SCAP as a brand and recovery ecosystem, not just a single SKU. This is important for long-term average order value expansion and customer lifetime value.
Weaknesses
Early Revenue Base: The jump from approximately $14,000 in historical revenue to a $420,000 projection for 2026 to 2027 is a 30-times increase. The path there depends heavily on scaling a commission-based sales representative network and marketplace channels that have not yet been proven at volume. Execution risk here is high.
Sales Model Scalability: The plan calls for 40 commission sales representatives each selling 40 units per year. Recruiting, training, managing, and retaining 40 reps is operationally intensive for a three-person founding team that is simultaneously managing manufacturing, content, and product development. This could become a bottleneck faster than the projections assume.
Patent-Pending: The ScapStick is currently protected by a provisional patent only, with a full utility application planned as part of the raise. Utility patent approval is uncertain, and a straightforward physical tool design could plausibly be worked around by a larger recovery brand such as Therabody or Hyperice if the subscapularis category gains mainstream visibility. The window to build a moat through brand and distribution before that happens is finite.
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