Scott and Tim, it's so good to have you on the show.
Good to be on the show down. Thanks for having us.
Yeah, of course. Well, one thing I was thinking about the first off your your businesses paddle Smash. Why did you choose something so fun to get into business with what inspired it?
We both sort of lucked into the industry, we took very different paths. My quick and dirty version is that I was hired as an entrepreneur in residence at a venture capital firm in Chicago. And that sounds a little boring, mixed with a little fun. It was some of both, but mostly fun. The whole premise there was they were hiring young, scrappy entrepreneurs, generally without an idea yet, giving them office space and kind of allowing us to mix and mingle with other entrepreneurs to see if we could come up with a concept that was worth funding. And these founders of this incubator had capital, and they would challenge us to come up with an idea that was testable, and then test it as cheaply and quickly as possible. We even would write our ideas on little cutouts of goldfish with the idea being that no idea is precious, and we should treat our ideas like goldfish, that pet that, you know, if it were to die, you wouldn't feel heartbroken, and you can easily flush it down the toilet. And so that's what I did we, with some other co founders came up with a concept around brain health, we decided to aggregate a bunch of brain healthy products together. And in one shop, we opened a kiosk at a mall in Chicago, that evolved into a brick and mortar location, and over 10 years that evolved to have 40 locations across the US. And we were focused on primarily toys and games that were good for your brain. And so we were kind of going out into the world looking for anything that was new, innovative, fun, but we were always trying to be at the forefront of this looking for trend and looking for kind of new brand new ideas that we can incubate in our shops. And that's where I met Tim.
Yeah, what a story. Well, Tim, I guess your side of the story, gonna share some insights?
Sure. So around 30 years old, I decided I'd always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I had finally made up the courage to make the leap. I was, at the time working in commercial real estate at like a, I don't know, you know, call it up a corporate desk job type of a scenario and just wasn't really happy and always had that entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial itch. And I started investing with some, some guys, I went to college with who were doing a software company. And again, I Sunday about turning 30 I didn't have a family yet. And I was like, like, what am I going to do it? You know, that I had my own idea yet. But I talked to those guys. And I said, Hey, like, what if I came on board and joined with you guys. And, you know, we tried to build this business together. So I did that. And so you know, sales software, we were building, and it was venture backed, you're managing a big team, burning a ton of cash, very stressful. And on the side, I had the idea to do a board game. Very, you know, the opposite of software, just a physical board game, I had read an article in Ink Magazine, that covered Cards Against Humanity, which was a really popular game, you know, a couple of years ago. And they kind of laid out the blueprint for what they did to bring their car game to life. And they were just a bunch of like, buddies from high school that did this in their early 20s. And so I figured, hey, I've got a game that I've been playing with friends up until their lake houses and you know, late nights, while you're trying to just, I don't know, crush the last few beers to do something fun. And so ended up you know, launching this this board game. And unlike any other business, I'm involved with it just kind of like caught on quickly. That's my first retailer was Scott identity, done a little Kickstarter barely got funded, it wasn't one of these ones that blows up on Kickstarter, you know, barely hit my funding goal. And then the day I was funded, I was introduced to Scott through a mutual connection. And he was, you know, into the concept into the idea and decided to take it into his stores. And so that began my journey in in the Twin game space and generally kind of fallen in love with it. And, you know, it's now what what I do full time is, you know, bring fun products to life.
Yeah. Wow. You know, there's something so inspiring about the story because I find that it's important to share to shed light on brick and mortar and physical products. I, at least my world has been so involved with digital products and services, that there's something that's so inspiring when And you can take a product that is just simply fun. It's not there's not a massive agenda behind it. You're not trying to make tons of money from just one sale of that product. And it's simply just something that brings joy to someone. And I love that that idea and the fact that you're able to scale it and expand it is pretty insane. What what it was that look like, what did that look like, as far as taking it to that first brick and mortar store for use got to then 40 stores, and just what made sense to expand at that point,
the whole time, it was a test and learn. And I think it was trying to kind of have efficient use of capital. So you know, we were venture capital venture back from the beginning. And I'd say, while we were venture backed, it was very small pockets of cash. And so we had to justify the next tranche of cash. And so it was always a Alright, let's try it as a kiosk. If that works well enough, then we'll move to the next stage, which is a brick and mortar location. If that works well enough, well, then let's try three different types of brick and mortar locations and see which is the right right model for us. We found from that, that the ideal brick and mortar location was in Mall. And so then we decided, all right, that's then the opportunity to expand even further. But every step along the way it was test, learn and justify the additional use of capital.
Yeah, yeah, that's great. Well, so then your powers combined into paddle Smash. Tell us a little bit more about what inspired this game slash toy slash product? Yeah, tell us a little bit more about it.
Yeah, so it's so it's an it's an outdoor backyard game. And the backstory is pretty interesting. And it begins with a gentleman by the name of Joe Bingham. And Joe is a structural engineer that lives in the foothills of Utah. And he has seven kids, six of them boys, and Joe and his family, you know, love backyard games. And for a long time, they love playing spike ball, Spike balls, you know, super popular backyard game for the past 10 years or so. And but Joe's gotten a little older, and his boys have grown up, and they just kind of whip them, you know, and he can't really compete. And they all kind of gravitated towards pickleball now pick a balls, incredibly popular sport, fastest growing sport in America. And the whole family enjoys that and they can all play well together. And but the issue is with pick that a lot of people that are playing pickleball these days, is that the courts are always crowded. Typically, you know, it's still kind of hard to find. So you're having to travel 20 plus minutes. And, you know, he didn't have the option of putting one in his back yard, you know, $40,000 or whatever costs. And so him is a structural engineer by trade was like, What can I do here to kind of like, bring this game, you know, pickleball to life in our backyard at a reasonable cost. And that's how he, you know, just again, was a handy person knew how to use a router and a CNC machine and different materials, and basically build a prototype that is now Palace mash, and perfected it over a number of years, and played it with family and friends around the neighborhood. And everyone had a ton of fun with it and really wanted to commercialize it and bring it to market. However, you know, just didn't didn't have the know how to really do that. And through a mutual connection was introduced to Scott. And so that's kind of the backstory of you know, how we were, you know, introduced to this product and how we got involved.
Yeah, definitely. So then, that's where both of you came together on paddle Smash. Specifically, apart from Tim, your product skidding or your your board game getting into Scott's stores, that this is kind of really the first product that you came together on.
We skipped some steps. But ultimately, my my store sold off to a big Canadian company. I worked there for three years. Tim's game got into Target got into Walmart got into all of what, what is the name of the game?
I don't know. I'm asking. No other nonsense. That's great. I haven't heard of it. But I definitely want to we have target nearby. It did very well.
I still like kind of happen across it in people's game collection. It's a funny thing I do when I'm in someone's home is these like things people look for in homes. I always look for their games collections. I judge them off of board games.
I've got I've got some friends that literally have bookshelves and walls full of games. And you're getting into some of the most obscure games you never heard of and half of them come from other countries that are adapted into American game. So yeah, I know, I know, I know what that's like. It's definitely a personality identifier. I feel like
Yeah. And we're in a renaissance of physical games. It's a funny thing. When I tell people what I do. I say I'm in Toys and Games. And the first question almost everyone asks is, oh, like apps like video games. So it's a funny thing that video games has hijacked the idea of games in the American psyche, but physical games are thriving right now. And I think it's just this desire on people's part, to reconnect to put their phones down and find an excuse to play over a table or in the backyard with yard games, yard games is the fastest growing category in the toy industry. So we saw that got excited by that. And we both personally love that a lot. So yeah, I guess to your original question, which I'd maybe have forgotten. But yeah, I think we just saw this as an opportunity with with paddle Smash, to kind of combine the best of two worlds and bring this to life out in the world, we, the way it plays is basically your got, you've got this central base. And that plays with three players, it plays one on one on one, but it plays best to the two. And in two versus two, you're standing opposite a teammate serving to them, and then you've got up to three hits to get back into the court. It's like bump set spike in volleyball or bump set, you know, bumps that hit in Spikeball, same idea three hits to get back into the court. And then the other team has same three hits to get it back into the court as well. And it kind of goes back and forth. The biggest key difference here is you're playing with a paddle, and with a pickleball. And we've got a hard base, which absorbs some of the blows. One thing we tested was whether this could be played on a spike ball net. And it can, but when you hit that ball with a with a pickleball, paddle down into that net, it shoots it about a mile into the air. So the rallies are super short. We also tested it without a net, and what was what people were doing or hitting the side shots. And it was just impossible to have long rallies. And so we decided what Joe did originally but we we love his decisions here to have a net system, which then requires you to hit downward, and then a plastic base, which, which absorbs some of that that shot. The whole goal here is to keep play more contained, and make rallies long. And we just find that really fun. So the kind of quick and dirty history here is that Tim sold his game business, I sold my business, we both vowed to work together at some point we had just hit it off when we were working together with his game. And so our paths kind of eventually met, I left the big company, Tim sold his business off. And we're like, Alright, what's next, I met Joe, I shared the idea with Tim. We said Alright, this is it. This is the one to work together. And so we got back together, Tim flew out to Utah, and we tested this out, we actually took it to some local pickleball courts, and just to see what people how they would react. And like immediately after we set it up, people were stopping mid game and coming up to the fence to watch. And then they came over to play like a an hour long play testing session with these players. And we didn't present it as our idea because it wasn't at this point, this was Joe's idea. So we were more like, Hey, listen, we don't know this guy, really. But we want to see if this idea is any good. It's a good tip for inventors to get valid and honest feedback is to not present their idea as their own. So lie a little to get quality feedback. So even if you're playing with friends and family, say, Hey, listen, someone's given me this idea to test out can you guys let's test it together. And that's what we did with our concept. We got really positive feedback. And we decided, alright, this is an idea worth pursuing. So over the last year, we've been working on this
amazing, and and is it? I mean, so you got the website and the socials going? What has it been looking like over the last year as far as the growth so far?
Well, so, you know, what we did was we did a licensing agreement with Joe. And so you know, Scott and I are the publishers of this game, and you know, own the business of paddle Smash, and, you know, based on sales, Joe will just receive a royalty for inventing it. But what Joe had was a very rough prototype, it was great, but it wasn't something that we could immediately take to market. And so what Scott and I had to do was, you know, get involved hire an industrial engineer and design firm to create a version of what Joe made. That would be scalable mass producible something that was portable, you know, a little light, lighter weight than what you know, Joe had put together, hobbled together in his in his garage. And so that process took several months quite frankly, you know, 3d CAD drawings, creating multiple prototypes of that version that you know, we've designed, you know, 3d printing, which is really cool. Now you can do that to get some like quick feedback on on, you know what you're building. So, you know, we finally finished that a couple months ago and have a great manufacturer partner that we work with and have our first set of units that are that are coming over currently. And so we're so we're not yet live in the market, we will be actually just before this podcast got a note that they should arrive to our warehouse in about a week or two. So I think, you know, this goes live, you know, yeah, we'll, we will be live. And so it's basically will be available, you know, we're starting out direct to consumer, at our website, which is paddle smash.com will also be available on Amazon, of course. And I think I can I think I think I say this publicly now, Scott, we did just get our first official retail order from shields, which is, which was a huge win, to not even be live you get with the product. And to already be, you know, getting into shields stores is pretty awesome. So we'll be as of next spring.
Amazing. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's great. Wow. I'm excited to try it out. I've got two boys at home and under five. And so I mean, maybe the one year olds can't handle it too much. But no, it's young for that. Yeah, even the five year old, you know, he we have pickleball nearby. And so I think a combination of the two, and we're always trying to like we have an unfinished basement. And so, you know, at when we're at home, he's always like, Let's do pickleball in the basement, over the chairs. But you know, having something that's a little more contained? Yeah, sounds really amazing. Yeah, this is great. I see that one of your mantras is to, basically that some of the best ideas happen while you're not in the office. Tell us a little bit more about why that is important to you both.
Yeah, well, one of the things that was fun about this was that we met Joe, Uh hum. And Joe presented an idea. But this is an idea that Tim and I had been thinking about for months in advance. So we spent a lot of time scouring the internet, just looking for kind of what's in the ether. And you know, it's hard to be online these days, not come across an article about pickleball. I mean, it is booming right now. So that's A and then B, you can't drive past a public park, at least where I live without seeing a group of kids out playing spike ball. So it was to us very apparent that there was something happening out in the outdoor space. And so it's like, ah, like, like many great ideas that ends up being a mashup of, of already existing ideas, we had started thinking about this. And we even have an early concept and drawing that shows a matte mashup of those two concepts. And then we met Joe, and Joe showed us our idea more fully baked, and we're like, perfect, he helped us fast forward this concept, a year probably by having already figured out a bunch of those elements. But for us, just like being in the office, we probably wouldn't have noticed that you like have to kind of get out into the wild. To find stuff like it, you have to get out in the wild to see what's out there to kind of notice things like I did, like we did in the park. Also, you have to get out in the wild to get feedback on your idea. This is where like if we would have come up with this in an office and then relied on the feedback of officemates for the concept, we would have missed out on a lot of really valid feedback on the concept that's helped shape it to what it is. And so this is where it's like, Tim and I mean, we work remotely, we work apart from one another. But we we kind of get ourselves out of the world enough to be able to get that valuable feedback.
Yeah, yeah. I love that insight. That's great. Tim, do you have anything to add? Or I guess your own thoughts around that?
No, I think I think he pretty much covered it. So I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
Well, it's pretty, it's self explanatory, I think with that phrase, but but I do love that concept and that it's built around this idea of, to me adventure of fun, of really like getting truly getting out of your home and office and in doing something more physical. And so I think that's pretty incredible. Well, well, you've already kind of referenced it. But tell us more about where the listeners and the watchers can can find and find you find paddle Smash. And to to join this this new business.
Sure. Go ahead, Tim.
Yeah, oh, yeah. Oh, would you say it's got?
You got
it? Yeah. So I mean, we were live at paddles. match.com. It's available for preorder right now. I think by the time this airs, you know, we'll be able to ship it next day or whatever from our warehouse in Wisconsin. And it'll be available on Amazon as well. Starting in shields, call it you know, Next year, we're also working on some big partnerships with some players that are emerging in the pickleball space. Can't talk too much about that, but some, you know, some big opportunities with different partners in the pickleball space that we're excited about. And Scott and I are flying out to just say, one of the largest outdoor retailer in the country next week. So, you know, hopefully be available on some other stores as well. But the initial response has been awesome. And, you know, we're super excited to get people playing in here soon.
That's great. That's great. Well, hey, Scott, Tim, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for sharing more about paddle Smash, and your entrepreneur journey. It's great.
Thank you for having us on. We appreciate it.
Yeah, of course.
