[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sleeves here with the senior pickleball report powered by TNC Network.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Let's get it going.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: In this week of our people of Pickleball episode, we speak with the man who created Om Pickleball, the aero one racket. The pickleball racket. Yes, you guessed it. This video caused quite a stir on my channel and it continues to do so. So we find out who he is and what he's up to next and try and get to the bottom of some of the questions that you may have about the aero one. All right, folks, but before we get to that, consider subscribing to the channel. Check out all the links in the description below. Our sponsor crown some discounts down there as well. And check out our newsletter and merch pages. All right, folks, let's get to that conversation.
All right, Johnny Jabow, welcome to the senior Pickleball report. He is obviously created quite a stir on my channel, at least with the arrow one racket. And I think the word racket is really what sort of caught people. And it is the biggest, I guess, most viewed video I've ever had by well over like 1500 views and huge amount of comments back and forths. But we'll get into all of that. But we need to find out first, Johnny, really. I mean, you know, obviously this sport is captivated not only the US, but it's starting to captivate the globe. And how did it grab you?
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Well, just want to say, first of all, sleeves, I appreciate the intro and I just wanted to say as we were talking just before we recorded, but the amount of people that I've had reach out to me, directly to my team. Just talking about you and the interview that you did has been incredible. By far the most popular reviewer I've had. I would say, at least in terms of the responses that people, you have a very passionate following and I love that. It's really nice, I appreciate it. But in terms of getting into pickleball, actually, it's a funny story. It all happened because my wife kicked me out of our other company.
Not the house, just a company. So my wife and I are serial entrepreneurs and we have a few other companies. And one of them, I'm not very good. After the first couple of years in any company, I kind of get distracted by shiny objects. And so after, for a certain number of years in this company, my wife was like, you're a bit of a deadweight here. You need to get out and do something. You're dragging your feet. And so she kicked me out of that and just so happened a friend of mine had texted me at the same time. I was like, do you want to come play pickleball? And I played it a few years ago and I thought, yeah, I'll jump down. And I picked up a nine dollar paddle from the local TK Maxx or whatever the shop was on the way over that I found. And I got out on the courts.
Anyway, like everybody else, I got addicted to it. I love the community, I love the people that were playing. I love the fact that 72 year olds could WHOOP on 20 year olds convincingly and just the joy that people were having. So needless to say, my hour long escapade turned into a six or seven hour got lost until the evening. And then I came back to my wife and I was like, I know what I'm doing. We're starting a new company. It's going to be a pickleball brand. And so she was overjoyed by that statement, just kicked me out in 6 hours. And now I had another company to add to or at least a plan for a company. And really the reason was, is because I love the game, I love the passion. But I didn't really understand probably naively why people were playing with paddles because what they were playing with, with the honeycomb core and the cutouts, they were very similar to what we used to play on the beach, just beach tennis. And so I just, I don't like weight distribution, I don't like how they swing. It's more like a push type game and it was a little slower. And I love that people are addicted to it. But I was talking to some of the guys on the court and I kept going through and playing for 6000, like, well, why are you buying what you're buying and why are you playing with what you're playing with? And no one really gave me an answer and no one could really tell me much about how their paddle was constructed. So me being me, I just basically offered to buy cash all of the paddles that were on the floor and I bought as many as people would give them to me and I took them home and jig sawed them all open and just to see how they were built.
And it was interesting because I was like, well, I love this game and I love this sport, but why is it so slow? Like surely it's going to speed up. Everything speeds up in sports and also where are the tennis players? These guys would be incredible at this sport. And so that was really the genesis of the whole arm brand. It was building pickleball rackets, basically bringing mini tennis rackets to the game that were, I found afterwards, I had to be USPA approved, so we then had to actually pass regulation. But the whole idea was, look, I think the tennis players are going to start coming in. The game is going to start speeding up. There's going to be more passing shots, they're going to be more cross court shots, more top spin, a bit more like tennis and other racket sports. And basically, the players are going to need something different than pedals. They're going to want to racket something that they can snap their wrist with, something they can drive hard, have the feel of a tennis racket, even though it doesn't have strings.
That was my play. That was about nine months ago.
Over the last year, we've kind of seen the game has sped up. A lot of the tennis players are now dominating.
A lot of our players that came from tennis are no longer slowing down their game.
There's anything wrong with this slow game. It's just different. And so when I was talking to the players and researching how to do this, a lot of the tennis players were saying, you know, my pickleball coach is telling me to slow down and to bring in the game. And I was thinking, well, why not just speed up? You've got 15 years on most of us. You've got great.
Why would you downgrade the skills you already have? Let me get you a racket, and then just take the racket in tennis to pick a ball and let's see what happens. And so that's kind of where it started, and that's where we've grown now, much to my wife's chagrin.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you know, when I hit it and I received it and I took it out, it is, it's like nothing else I've played.
It does feel like a racket. I haven't played a lot of tennis, but I played enough tennis to know that the, with this, what the era one did for me is it made, it was just super nimble, I guess is the best way of putting it for me in my hands. Like, I could manipulate it very slightly and make things happen without trying to over exaggerate on a shot. And actually, you could play it a little bit like a table tennis racket, you know, which I got in a back and forth with a guy over the Internet on that, too, because I had to show, apparently he doesn't know how to google, but there are parts in the world, large parts of the world, where they call it a racket. In table tennis. But anyway, I digress. I just literally just kind of just maneuvered slightly, and it would move the ball so effortlessly. And so when I brought it down to my local court and I gave it to people, you know, it's one of those things, you get something and you're like, oh, my gosh, you got to try this. And then everybody else tries it, and they go, eh, this wasn't the case. Every single person that's ever hit this racket has gone, holy cow, this is something different, because, like you mentioned earlier, when you were, you know, sawing apart and tearing apart the paddles that you had, they're pretty much made like sandwiches. You know, you got the two ends, and you got the little honeycomb in the middle, and it's just kind of boxy, and it stick a handle on there and you hit it. And, you know, I get it. That's a simplified version. But this felt like, when we spoke earlier, this felt like a Porsche. Just felt like a race car. This felt something that you could really maneuver, and you could still play the slow game with this, because what I noticed is, for an edgeless racquet, this is the first one that I played where it had an enormous sweet spot. That was the knock, really, for me, on edgeless designs. I played with the gearbox in the past, and I played with pro Kennex, and I loved them both. But the knock for me was if you didn't hit a dead center, yeah, you were going to get a dead ball in some on some level. And that is not the case with the arrow one. And so you can do both. You can really rip it, and you can be very precise in your ground strokes, but you can be incredibly
[email protected]. In your speed ups, in your dinks, in your resets, all of the above. And I was like, I guess the thing that I was a little hesitant of was, one, the sweet spot, and two, the shape. I was like, wow, this is wide. I'm using. I've been playing with a lot of elongated stuff because that was the hot setup. So I'm getting a lot of those reviews. But I tell you, I really like the width.
It seems more stable.
And for somebody who's an amateur like myself, I think that's a good thing. And it gives a little bit of confidence because it feels more like a shield and something wide that you can get in front and move the ball around. Um, and you can really get it around quick because it's not such an elongated face and a shorter handle, and I have smaller hands, so that, you know, the people that might want a little longer handle. We'll talk about what you're going to do in the future in a little while. But for me, it's fine because I can get two hands on this thing fine and rip it. So I was blown away by that. And I guess that I've never played with anything that's, um, even close to being similar. I play with things that are pretty good and very good, but this just is, this is just in a different place. And so maybe talk about, you know, how you got to that, because there are some design features here that, you know, not a lot of people are aware of or using.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you for the review. You know, your feedback is, I really appreciate it. I'm a designer, an industrial designer by degree. So what we are is massively neurotic on the things that we build, because we want to give out this idea that we know what we do is good, but we really don't. We really just approval, it's like create. And so we never get tired of just people saying, you know, I like what you built and, or I like what you designed. So I really appreciate. But, yeah, I mean, as you mentioned, there's a lot of great battle companies out there. There's a few that I love. I'm a particular fan of the gearbox and everything.
Their engineering is ambitious, and what they've produced is phenomenal. And obviously, there's big brands out there like Selfirk. They do a great kind of company wide brand. You've got the newer guys, like carbon and then some of the fly by nights that still make a good paddle. Spartas is one of the ones. Recently I learned about the owner, and there's a lot of great stuff going on in the pickleball community, so I don't take anything away from that. But for me, it was like, they're all paddles, though. They're all designed a certain way. It's more for the push game. And so when we, when we, what I wanted to do is move it over to rackets. And so the way that we did that and the way that kind of separates the arm, as you said, that kind of feel, that touch. A lot of our tennis players say it feels a lot more, or they get, they can, they have confidence in the feeling now, because what happens is when you hit it in the middle, it's got that high torsional twist rate. It's about just over seven, which is very, very high for a pickleball paddle. And so you have that confidence in the racket in the field, and that comes from the perimeter weight. And so our tennis players basically say it feels like, you know, Wilson with 45 string tension. I know where I'm going to place this. I know. Slight manipulation of the hands gives me tennis like angles that, honestly, you can't really create with paddles just because of the nature of how paddles are constructed. And obviously, as you've alluded to, the rackets are just fundamentally different. So very quickly, you know, paddles are cut out, as you said, of a honeycomb. And then usually they're either, they used to be sandwiched, glued together with an edge guard, and now the more modern ones are kind of thermoformed, which is a lot more stiffer. But the edge must have a problem because they don't have a huge amount of perimeter weight. And a lot of people kind of inject foam into corners to create that perimeter weight. And, you know, I was asked the other day by someone like, why don't we inject foam? And we have a little bit to fuse the core into the frame, but we don't inject foam. Reason being is we actually have that internal racket frame. So it's an independent internal frame which creates all of the weight that we need, and then we fuse side. So, you know, if you're, if you're looking at one of our error ones, the reason it's double thermoformed is this is not just cut out. This whole frame here is an independent, if you took this place off, as you've alluded to before, it's, you know, it's going to look like a tennis racket without the strengths. And then we bring that into hexium core, we fuse it to the frame, and then we thermal form the whole thing again. Now, that's the only way you can get that racket feel. So when you're hitting with its sleeves and you're feeling, and you feel that confidence and you feel that top spin and that snap and that ease through the air, what you're really doing is you're flexing the frame. And because it's not a paddle and, you know, you've got that aerofoil which is allowing it to move through the air quicker. So we have a static weight of 8.1, but we have a swing weight of less than 109. So it's, you know, very similar to a 7.6 weight paddle.
And that's a lot where the power comes from as well, because you're able to swing a relatively middle weight at 8.1 bracket, but you can swing it like it's a lightweight. So that obviously, force times acceleration equals power. And so you get that power that comes through along with the snap, gives you the top spin to drive that ball down. And so a lot of our tennis players are able to create a lot more speed because they're passing shots, because they're able to get that downward momentum that you need. It comes from tennis, but with paddles, it's very, very, very difficult to do. It's a different game.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I think what this, the aero one, allowed me to do was to be a little more risky in some of my shots and get away with it, whereas I could not control it as well with what I would call a traditional paddle.
It's specifically like drives. Like, if I want to hit a drive, instead of just kind of going forward and putting my momentum, I could kind of flip it a little bit and get that more of that brush feel, um, and count on it to do what it was going to do. Um, and that's, I think what I enjoyed the most was, um, I could flip the ball a little more, I could get a little nifty, a little more crafty. Um, and it just felt like I could be, I guess, the best way of putting, a little more creative in some of my shot, my shot making, which, which was great because I'm like, um, there's a lot of things we all want to try and do and that we're not capable of doing. But I think what this racket allowed me to do was sort of, it gave me the, I guess, the confidence to be more creative out on the court, and that obviously just exudes confidence in your game as well. So I think that's really what I enjoyed.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it helps. And, you know, when we came into this, I wanted to, I didn't really like how a lot of, not all, but a lot of the battles felt a little cheap and they didn't feel like they had quality. So when we were building the era, one, I really wanted the whole brand to kind of scale the game of pickleball, because, you know, you've got tennis and you've got golf, and they have great brands and they're very upscale, and pickleball is coming there. But when you were young, as a sport, as an identity, and we're learning, but I feel like we can upscale what we're doing in the community and kind of move towards that. Not the tennis necessarily, but the tennis and golf. Style so that you've got that forever. And so I really wanted to bring that in and make things that are a little bit more indestructible, that felt a bit more posh as, you know, uncrate kind of quarters, the Porsche pickleball. And I think that that was a testament just to what we were trying to do. Same with the packaging that we did. We're just trying to upscale everything. You said feel confident. So one of the nice things that we hear about from a lot of people is, you know, when they pick it up, they just feel like they can win, and that's a big part of it. If you feel confident in the, you know, that's what Nike does really well. When you put on night gear, you feel part of that night brand that you are an athlete and you can perform and you look the part. And there's, you know, there's a real. There's a real part of that. So we wanted to give that confidence to people. So when you grab it, this, this, you know, this samurai sword of yours, as you go on to the court, you feel like, this is my katana. I can do something with it. And I know there's. That is actually a pickleball paddle board katana. So I should probably just caveat that. I don't mean that one, but it's that feeling, right? It's that feeling of confidence in what you're using. And so. And as you said, you know, we're able to create different angles. I call them tennis angles that you don't typically see because you get more of a wristy action. You can get the power from it. A lot of the time, you get what I call that tennis snap. So if you've ever seen the tennis players, they sort of rise up and they sort of swing through, and then they snap their wrists, which creates that downward topspin drive.
It's almost impossible to do that with a paddle. I mean, some of them are a little bit better, but just the weight distribution, it's very difficult to get that rise up and snap. But with obviously a racket shape and a racket frame, that's what you find yourself doing, is that you can actually do these passing shots because you can get that tennis snap, but not.
And, you know, we have a pro now who's. Who's out, who's from a tennis background. And, you know, I don't blame anymore because it's just no fun for anybody.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm okay.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: But compared to this guy, you know, last time we played, he was like, should we have another game? It was about eleven.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: You know what?
[00:18:24] Speaker B: I'm good. I'm good.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: This is not fun anymore. You're destroying me. But it's because he's playing mini tennis now. Like, he's had 20 years of playing tennis. He's so he has all of those movements down and now he's got a racket in his hand on a smaller pickleball court and he uses that to great advantage. And I think a lot of the tennis players that use the aero one are finding that it's just a very, like I said, not for everybody. There's nothing wrong with paddles. Paddles are great. I play with some still, sometimes, not as often these days, but because my preferred style is the racket. But I really do think that the future of pickleball is going to kind of separate into these two categories. Those that like to play with paddles and the thicker pause and a bit more, not necessarily more control, but a different type of control, more of a push action. Those that are going to move over to more of the tennis style play. And I know pickleball enthusiasts hate me bringing in the tennis idea. I just mean tennis style play, a lot more top spin, a lot more passing drives, a little less
[email protected]. You know, a little bit more time, honestly, a little bit more watchable, in my opinion. Like when I think there's going to be a whole core cohort of people that move over to that faster game and they're going to need racket frame designs. And to be honest, you need that internal racket frame. You need it to be double thermoformed because you just don't get that feeling that you're talking about.
You can't just stamp these things out. I mean, each one of the arrow ones takes three to 5 hours to make because it's a long process. And just tennis racket, it's the same sort of process as a tennis racket. We just fusing a core rather than putting on strings. And it takes time. But that's the only way to get the performance that we're looking for and get that feeling that you're talking about, right? Yeah.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: I think the biggest, where the feeling stems for the most is it comes before, you know, even before you play with it. And obviously we talked about, you know, the unboxing I did of this, uh, paddle a racket was amazing. I mean your, your presentation is phenomenal. I mean, you, you're getting something pretty special when you open this thing up and you look at it. And, uh, I actually, I don't usually bring my wife out to, to look at the packaging that comes because she's like, oh, another one. But I did for this one, I go, you have to see this. It's just not, it's just next level. And I think, like you said, you're really sort of setting a standard for something that's high quality.
And when you, when you put it in your hand, the first thing that everybody notices before they even swing it is the handle.
And the way it feels in your hand, it just feels different. And for me, the way I kind of describe how it feels, it feels like, and I know, you know, everybody's going unibody and all that stuff, but for whatever reason, this is the first, and actually, up to this point, the only one that feels like it's genuinely part of the rest of the structure. And so talk about the handle, because I think in the beginning when paddles were coming out, the handle was sort of overlooked. You had a popsicle, you stick it on the end. And then obviously people were starting to go, well, the handle is a little more important. And they started to look to tennis and they started to obviously look to the unibody and all that and being part of the whole piece, but I don't know what it is.
There's something about this handle that is just different. And when I hand it to somebody right away, they always do this. They go, whoa.
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[00:23:03] Speaker A: Like, this is just if you never hit a ball yet.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: Sure. I love it. Yeah, I mean, you nailed it. Like a quick kind of history lesson on the paddles is originally it was like you said, lollipop stick. You stick a handle on. They kind of glued it together at this sort of joint here. And the problem, the power players started breaking them. They would fracture there. And then along came this unibody type terminology, which really just meant that instead of cutting out the face and then attaching a handle, they were sort of putting the shape of the face plus the handle. So they would, you know, if you had a paddle shape, they would cut it all the way down. They would put down here, put down into the handle, and then, obviously, then it's just, it's just flat. It's just one big board. And so what they would do, get a piece of wood, and they would stick it on both sides. Wood or ev foam or something like that. And then they would wrap it, and they would, like, form the shape, and they would call it unibody, which, to a degree, it was, because it was all the way down. I guess it wasn't, it wasn't glued here, but it doesn't feel the same because at the end of the day, it's still flat, and you're just gluing things on. The difference between the arrow one is we're not gluing anything thing. So this frame that I talked about, this internal frame, it's all one piece molded, and it comes all the way down. And if you unwrap this, and I wish I had one with me, if you took all the wrapping off, it's all carbon all the way down, and it's formed a tennis racket. So none of this has got wood or either foam glued down it. And that's the feeling that you're talking about. And when you say it feels like it's one piece, it's because it is one fully independently formed, independently thermoformed frame from the handle all the way around. And then instead of then we don't glue the inside, we actually fuse the core into the racquet frame and then thermal form the materials over the top. So, again, it's all the feeling that you get from a product is all about how it's manufactured, and you can't fake it. So you can't kind of stamp these things out, make them look the same. Cut a hole out in a panel like some do, and be like, there you go. It looks like a racket. It's got aerodynamics, and it's like, yeah, I get what you're saying, but you're missing the point. Like, you want to racket, you need a racket frame. Like, there's no other way. And if you want to handle like you're talking about, that feels different that when people hold it, they're like, oh, well, this is different. That's because it is different. It's a completely different way of making it. This. We haven't cut this handle out. We've actually, we've got a mold that we form that handle as part of the racket frame. So. And people feel it. They can't articulate why a lot of the time, but they know it's different and they feel confident because this thing, and, you know, as I tell people, unless you, John McEnroe, this thing into the floor, you're not going to break it. I mean, you might ship it, you might cosmetic damage on it. If you are, you know, hitting it at 60 plus miles an hour all the time, maybe, just maybe, you'll be able to put a little dent in it. Possibly. But so far we haven't. But the one thing you're not going to do is you're not going to whale this thing into the ground and snap it in two. Because it would be the same way, you know, if you've got a tennis racket wailing into the ground, you're not going to snap that into. Because these things are formed in exactly the exact same manufacturing process as a tennis racket. It's longer, it's more expensive, and it's more time consuming, but I think it makes a better product and more long lasting product, in my opinion.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
I love the way it looks so much that I had to put edge guard tape on the top because I'm like, I want to scratch this thing up and I'm giving it to people to hit and I'm like, I don't want them to scratch it up either. So I just put a little strip on the top of to keep it nice.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: No, we actually had a lot of people reach out because these things, it's like 5 carbon. So you're never going to break this thing. But of course, what I didn't rely on, and this is silly because I am really particular about everything that I own. So we've got some particular edge guards that are coming through. I've actually got some samples sitting around that we're working on because that's what people have asked for. They want. Yeah, for sure. Guard adds extra perimeter weight that we don't need. So we're going to have a particular polymer that's clear, that keeps the logo, shows that we have this really nice three k carbon that comes all the way around.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: I want to keep that. And so, in fact, if you look at one of our, I'll get it afterwards. But you want to keep that kind of look and feel. So I'm gonna have, and we have shark skin over grips, because the handle that you were talking about, the feel of it's one thing, and then the other thing is the shark skin over grip. So when I was my twenties, I did a lot of diving, and I did a lot of shark diving, and fortunate to be able to look after and touch a lot of sharks.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: Very, very particular, it's a very particular feeling, and it's sort of that grippy, gritty type. It's won't go into the detail, but, yeah, so our sharp skin grip covers are basically, they feel quite like sharp skin. And what's different about them is when you hold them, they're quite, you feel confident in it. It's the shape of that, plus that shark skin. But then as you sweat, and some people are more sweaty than others, the more you sweat, the more it grips. So the polymer kind of grips your hand, so it's less slippy that I really like. And so we've got some sharp skin over grips to come out that have our logo on and everything else, but also just adds that extra width for some of the guys on over grips and everything else, but, yeah, so the over grips and the edge guard, we know we're working on it because we've had a lot of people reach out for the exact same reason. They just don't want to scratch it.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the biggest thing. And I did put, after a few weeks, I did put an over grip on it, but I took it off because I like, and I, it's rare that I, that I like a grip, actually. That's sort of my pet peeve, is the grip. And there's all, you know, as you know, there's just, you name it, there's endless types of grips out there. But it, it changed the way it felt in my hand when I put that over grip on. So I played with it for about a week with it. I took it off. I'm like, no, I like this. I'm just gonna, I guess I told myself at the time, I'm just gonna use this until I wear this grip out and then I'm gonna ask for another grip.
[00:29:32] Speaker B: Yeah, no, we will send you one. But, um, that's, you're not the only one. A lot of people have done the same thing. They like playing with an over grip. They put an over grip on. They didn't like the feeling of the over grip. And they wanted the shark skin feel. And so I listened to them, and we just. It's a little different to develop it because grips are not the same. The grip that you actually put on the production, it's a grip. Yeah, it's a grip. It's a natural grip with padding. And so we had to modify it slightly to make it work. But we think we've got something that works now. I have a few samples out with our guys that are using the over grip, and it's got the exact same feel. And like you said, it's to add a little bit of padding or just protect it, but you don't want to wear it out.
So we have those in production. We hope to have them out soon, because, as you said, people have really liked the shark skin. They've liked the handle, the feel. And it's been surprising.
The handle was not the thing I thought people would really focus in on, but a lot of people have, which I appreciate. It's one of those things that tennis players know for sure. That feeling starts with that handle grip. And it was just one of those things I couldn't understand when I was. When I was jigsawing all of those other panels up. The very first time I went out, I started cutting up the handles and realizing that they were just basically gluing everything together with foam. And I was like, what is going on? Like, how much of these things? And then I'm finding out, like, 2250. I'm like, who is paying 250 for this glued on piece of wood? This is insane. And, you know, the rackets at 250 now are thermoform. They're a different caliber. And that's great. Back then, when I was the ones I, at least I was playing with, I was like, wow, these are. These are a little amateur for the price. And so that's kind of what spurned it on, you know?
[00:31:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. CHriS OlsON, Pickleball Studios one of the first people to really point out the flaws within the handles in the pickleball industry, because, you know, you could still see the polymer if you'd unwrap it on the sides, and you could, it would feel sort of boxy and sharp on the edges. And I think what gets overlooked a lot maybe in the production of something like this is that, you know, the really, the only thing we're touching is the handle. And that's the most important thing. You know, they put so much emphasis on the head and everything else, but when it comes down to it, the really, the only thing that the human contact is happening with is your hand on this handle. And so you knocked it out of the park, obviously. And what you did is you had the combination with the grip as well. And it's really, I can probably count on two or three fingers, the grips and the handle combinations that I've really come across that I like. And most of them have come, really, in the last two to three months. So I think there's a trend, at least in the industry, where the handle is being looked at a lot more closely, which I think is fantastic because it does make a big difference in the performance.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And it needs to. It's like, you know, I have a pet peeve. As a designer, you can't help but look at everything in the world and know, like, I have a Tesla, and I love how Tesla's are designed.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: What's crazy to me is the bits that you touch are plastic rather than, you know, leather or at least synthetic leather. And some of. Some of the porsches are the same. And I never understood that because when you. When you study engineering or industrial design, which is like, design and engineering, you do a lot on anthropometrics and ergonomics and, like, how do people touch and feel things? And that was one of those things when we were building the era. One, I was like, this handle doesn't make sense. Like, it's the only part you touch. It's what gives you a ton of feel in the game. And all of these wood cutouts, they're not the same. You need to mold them. And that's the problem, though. It's like, you have to have that racquet frame because you actually can't mold a handle with a paddle design because it has to be even the thermoformed ones, they're still cut out of the core and then thermoformed on top.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: Right.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: You literally have to move to rackets to move to frames in order to design a mold that will mold that handle out of carbon and then perfect ergonomics, the amplitude there. There's a whole bunch of stuff that I can geek out on, but we won't do.
But basically, this long story. So it all comes down to once you run through all those and you have that opportunity, you have that ability. Ability like Tesla not having an engine. They're able to do things in that car that other performances can't because they have to deal with oversteer and understeer, whereas Tesla doesn't, because the battery goes across the entire car.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: It's perfect.
[00:34:03] Speaker B: So they're able to do things other people can't. It's the same with arm and the era one, because we have a racket frame, we're able to do things that other people can't. And therefore our products are able to have the characteristics of things that others can't. And people might not be able to articulate why they like it. They just know they like it.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: What I'm saying there is the reason you like the handle and others have is because it's molded, it's not being cut, and that makes a huge difference when it comes to sports equipment.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So obviously, you know, we talked a little bit about some of the things that you've learned. Obviously, you know, developed an over grip and some edge guard that's clear.
And, you know, putting out a paddle, there's in any product you put out, you learn from it and you go, okay, when I do something next, here's what I want to try and do. So maybe talk a little bit about what's coming up for you and some of the things you learned, obviously, from putting out the arrow one.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, some of the best things I've learned is this is a great industry. I've been in quite a few industries in my time, and this is by far the most fun. Like, the pickleball community is full of incredible people, and I have never been part of a community or sold a product. And I've had a few companies that sold products. You don't feedback. I mean, I have people reaching out to our team daily with recommendations, thoughts that they've had, reason, ways that they would do it better, and sometimes there are ways that they think would be improved. And all of that is great. It's just, it's incredible to watch how passionate people are. They'll reach out and send paragraphs in on how they felt, and I'm kind of, like, committed to reading each one, which is becoming a bit of a problem right now.
They write incredibly long emails that I really appreciate, and they're very, very passionate about game, about the sports, about their community. And so the first thing that I've really learned is this is one of, if not the best company I've ever started or been a part, especially the most fun product I've ever designed is simply the community is so responsive. And I love that. And, you know, I hope to, to a degree, polarize it a little bit, but in the best possible way, like, for the benefit of the sport, because I really do think pickleball is going to continue to grow in dominance, continue to bring so much joy to everybody that's playing. It's just such a great opportunity. I don't get to play it as much as I used to now because I spend half my time designing stuff, but it's just to say the first thing, that's what I've learned, and then the second one is following on from that. People will tell you what they want.
[00:36:46] Speaker A: Like, they will, as we found out in my comments.
[00:36:50] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, those, I try and get back to those kind of guys as well, and, you know, you get, you get all sorts of people. You and people will tell you what they want and what they don't like. They will tell you how to spell racket or not spell racket. They will tell the racket or not a racket, and they will get incredibly passionate about it.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: Where are the strings?
[00:37:10] Speaker B: It will die on every possible hill. It is incredible.
But what they'll do is they'll tell you what they want. And so what we try and do here now is we just try and listen to everybody. Obviously, some people come up with some crazy ideas. A lot of what people reach out with isn't technically possible for one reason or another. Maybe it's engineeringly not technically possible, or there are USPA rules that you have to abide by that probably aren't the best for the game, but they're the rules. They're the ones that you have to play for at this moment. The USAPA are doing a great job and kind of trying to grow the sport and bring it together, and they're working through some things, but you still have to sit underneath those rules to keep it fair for everybody. So there's two technicalities. So I get a lot of people reaching out with what I should do, and I completely agree with them. I just can't do it. It's either technically not possible or not cost effective, or it's currently against the rules, you know, and there's also some incredible ideas. And the more you talk to people, obviously we're coming out with an aero one Pro, which is an elongated version of the aero one, because for those players that are 4.0 and above that want that extra reach, they've got the 200 backhand and they want that extra half inch. So the aero one pro is in development, and hopefully we'll be out. So I'm not going to give a timeframe because I always do that. Never quite sure, but, and it's going to be exactly like the aero one. Same frame. We're trying to modify the core to try and extend that sweet spot because as you know, as most people know, I think now, once you get an elongated frame, as you tighten up those edges, as you bring the width in, you tighten up the spot. You make things. It's a little less forgiving, especially on. I'm trying to counteract that with some of the stuff that we're working on, but for 4.0 players and above, they're hitting it in the center 95% of the time. They don't need that extra forgiveness. What they want is the extra leverage and the extra power. So we're going to keep our, for the most part, our product line very, very simple. Kind of follow the apple mentality of having an aero one and an arrow one pro for the above, or just those that like to play with an elongated and then an arrow two and an arrow two pro, an arrow three. We don't really want to spread ourselves too thin and have 50 different, that we can't really get on top of. We just want to every year or 18 months or whatever the site, well.
[00:39:35] Speaker A: You couldn't keep up with the emails anyways with that.
[00:39:38] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. It's not enough keeping up with one. So we just want to kind of focus down, keep it, and make it really simple for people that we're going to put in the very best racket technology that we possibly think in any given year, and we're going to make it into that iteration of the aero one or the aero one pro. And we know there'll be people that might want it slightly this way or might want it slightly that way. And we get that. We're just going to do the very best that we possibly can on this one product in these two iterations and then just move from there and just move forward on trying. Just like the MacBook Pro and the MacBook. It's just absolutely done very, very well. And it's a little less confusing for people because now there's a lot of paddle companies that have 10, 20, 30 paddles and they're all named different things. You never question which is the latest one, why that was better than this one, why that's not. I mean, we might actually just do an error one Evo, which is just with an Eva song because I have some code in the out at the moment. Now that is a rocket ship.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: I would not recommend, like, we'll probably do a limited run. It will not be USPA approved. Like, it is totally illegal. You cannot use this in tournament but it is fun to play with because you hit it. I mean, if you imagine the Eva foam of like the vice and then you multiply that by a racquet frame with the flex and the snap, it is unreal how hard you can hit this thing.
[00:41:00] Speaker A: But you can, you could kill grandma with it.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: Grandma would struggle. Yeah, no, don't put that out there. Sleeves. Now I'm going to have more emails coming in like, I played with this.
I can't have that weighing on my, please, every, like, PSA. Nobody hit hard against your grandmother. Play nice. Yes. Yeah.
[00:41:20] Speaker A: Play nice with your qualified partner and opponents.
[00:41:24] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:41:26] Speaker A: Well, hey, I appreciate your time, Johnny. I'm really looking forward to what you're doing in the future because you've clearly knocked it out of the park. And, you know, the people that love it, the people that hate it, they are engaged and they know, and they know the arrow one regardless. And what's coming from you, I'm sure is going to be exciting. It's going to look great, it's going to feel great. And I really appreciate you taking the time. And it's my favorite racket.
[00:41:56] Speaker B: It is my only racket.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: But I tell you, I play with a lot of different things and I keep reaching back in there because, like we talked about, this thing just does some stuff that you, others don't. That's really what it comes down to it. And I appreciate the opportunity to play it and to sit down and I'm glad you got a chance to sit down and we can record this. We've talked in the past, but it's nice for some other folks to kind of see where you're coming from and what's coming from. So.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I appreciate it and I hope, we hope we stick around for a while because we like it. There's a lot of great competition out there, but we think we have something that we can really help the industry move forward on. So we hope, we hope. We're around for many, many years to come. We've got some exciting stuff in the pipeline. So, yeah, maybe we'll be doing another interview in a year's time with a whole bunch of other stuff that we're bringing to the market. And who knows, maybe the industry will start moving over to rackets as well, which will be a good thing. I do think the racquet frame is going to be the future, so I'm sure there will be other companies that start doing variations of it, hopefully not copying the aero one directly. We do, but there'll be variations of it, I'm sure. And that's a good thing for the sport. So we'll see how, where it goes. It can be, we can have that polarizing paddles versus racquet type pickleball. We'll get all the youtubers on it and see which side of the line they flow. Paddles or rackets?
[00:43:20] Speaker A: Absolutely. Paddles or rackets. Hey, folks, all the information you need about am in the air. One are in the description, plus the discount for the promo code if you want to get this racket, and I do highly recommend it. All right. Hey, Johnny, thanks. And we'll catch up hopefully in a year from now and see what you're doing.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: Sounds great. Take care, Steve, hope you enjoyed our.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: Interview with Johnny and all things on pickleball. All right, folks, at the end of.
[00:43:45] Speaker B: The day, hey, let's pickle.
