Great New Idea: Laser Engraved Personalized Paddles

Yesterday, I got my second order for a personalised paddle, but there was a bit of a snag… it's for an upcoming photoshoot and the schedule doesn't allow enough enough time for me to have a custom street sign made. So, trying to figure out a way to make the order doable, it occurred to me that the best bet might be to have a local trophy shop on his end either laser engrave or sandblast the text he wanted onto the paddle. And the minute I thought it, I realized that this would be a way cooler, sexier, easier way to personalize paddles.

This is a perfect example of how feedback from customers and readers here at the blog really helps me improve the product as I go. I'm always open to hearing more suggestions or ways I could make the whole process better. I'm thinking I should offer engraving as a new standard service on my end. Aside from bringing a clean high-tech look to the paddles, it would also solve a number of problems that cropped up when I filled the first order for custom paddles. What problems? Well, it's like this:

I'm a sucker for extended metaphor, so it seemed only natural to use a street sign motif to create personalized paddles. In my initial vision of the product line, I thought it would be fun to make as many road metaphors as possible, given the tire and street sign materials I was working with.

I found an online company that offered affordable custom signs, designed a couple products around them, and posted images worked up in Illustrator to the catalog page. Actually, when I first launched tirepaddle.com, I had working prototypes of each style of paddle, but I hadn't yet had time to have them professionally photographed. For the first couple weeks, all the images were combinations of photoshop and illustrator. Those have long since been replaced with real photos. At this point, what you see is what you get. The only thing I wasn't 100% sure of in the beginning was how the custom paddles would look.

I sent the sign company a couple emails before posting the drawings. It seemed prudent to make sure they would be willing to print adult content, for instance. Their name was Cute Signs, so I could see them maybe balking at a request for something like "cumslut" or whatever. I didn't get a response to any of my emails, and was about to pull the product when an order came in for a "slut" paddle. I tried contacting the company again, and again got no response. So, I let the buyer know there might be a delay and went ahead and placed an order for the sign. It worked out. The sign arrived on time, looked great, and I shipped out the paddle. All good. Except…

The sign was really too flimsy to hold up on it's own, so I had to laminate it to the thicker aluminum I use on the Original BadAss model. That's fine, but it's more work and more material. Also, I was really not happy with how unresponsive the company was to my attempts to contact them, and with the fact that I couldn't reach them by phone. I'm also not wild about the delay of waiting for them to make and ship the sign before I can make and ship the paddle. I think that's okay as long as people know in advance that it takes longer, but it's still a drag. The real drawback is the thin material and the fact that the cost of the custom sign prohibits being able to offer printed paddles at wholesale pricing. There are other companies that can print signs on thicker aluminum, but their prices are far too high to make the paddles affordable at all.

So I've been thinking about it and trying to come up with a better solution. One idea is to find someone who can print street sign decals, using the same kind of vinyl that the D.O.T uses for short run signage. That might be cheap enough to open up the wholesale option, and it would allow me to use the thicker aluminum I need. I haven't yet found a source for that, but I think I'll make it a priority when I get back home. The other idea is to find someplace local that can do custom text via laser engraving or sandblasting. That'll also have to wait till I get back, but with any luck I'll have an update on it next week. I really like the idea. If it works out, it should also be possible to have images etched onto the paddles, which could be way cool. I can totally envision a pin-up line, maybe even featuring limited edition works by various erotic artists. The possibilities are huge. Rock on.

Some time ago, I offered to sell paddles at wholesale to anyone willing to provide reviews or photo sets of the paddle in action. This offer is still open (email me if you want to take advantage of it) but currently doesn't include the custom paddles. If I can bring the price down, I'll be able to also offer custom paddles to people in a position to drive sales up, so that's another reason to get this figured out. So stay tuned. This could be really good.

Comments

[DM]

How about using extra thick aluminum and then sandblasting away an image of the tire-tread pattern on it? So that way you have a sort of debosed image of the negative space of the rubber side? That way you could use the non-rubber side to leave intersting patterns as well?

-DM

P.S. How'd dinner go?

[DM]

What about doing a double sided paddle with different treads on each side?

-DM

[BadAss]

DM—

Not a bad idea. In fact, I'm looking at some interesting patterned metals that might make for some great new options: http://www.mozdesigns.com/patterns.html

I have a feeling that the physical R+D is going to be a bit slow until business picks up a bit, but at least I can source materials and see if people are interested while I wait for that.

[BadAss]

Oh, and I do like the idea of double tire paddles. They'd be pretty heavy, but might be a cool option all the same.

and

Dinner went pretty well... thanks for asking ;-) I'm not sure yet where it will lead, but there's definitely some promise.