We recently connected with Matt Bodenchuk and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Matt, thanks for joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

The Toker Poker was born out of necessity. My wife, Leslie, and I made the first prototypes out of acrylic paint and hot glue because we needed the product, not because we wanted to start a business. It wasn’t until we used the first prototypes, did we fully understand how truly useful this little device and that it would be a game changer. Because we grew this brand from a grass roots perspective, we can easily connect with our clientele because at our core, we are our clientele. As big money continues to pour into our industry, it is becoming increasingly more rare that true mom and pop innovators have the ability to scale out brands without some sort of funding. My wife and I bootstrapped this from the beginning and are sole owners of our company today. Along with this, the husband/wife combo is extremely rare. We both offer very different perspectives and the equal male/female influence is very apparent in our overall branding. I think that these two pieces combined have allowed us to be successful for the last decade.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Our Story Have you ever needed something so badly that you decided to invent it yourself? We have.
The Beginning

Nice to meet you. We are Matt and Leslie, owners and inventors of the Toker Poker. They say necessity is the mother of invention and that is exactly how the Toker Poker was born. It was kind of like when Squints finally makes his move on Wendy Peffercorn…we just couldn’t take it anymore! Resin coated lighters and the endless search for paperclips could no longer be the norm. We created the first Toker Pokers in small batches – Macgyvered out of hot glue, bobby pins, and acrylic paint, and we soon realized the convenience we had created. From then on, we simply couldn’t smoke without a Toker Poker. And you shouldn’t either.

The Fam
Meet our family. Literally. These fine humans are either blood relatives or have put in 2-3 decades of friendship. Before they were official employees, they (plus many others!) put in countless volunteer hours. Now, this lean team handles trade shows, operations, shipping, customer service, printing and social media. They continue to be the world’s greatest brand ambassadors and we are so grateful for their many contributions!

The Process
We take great pride in the design of our products and to be honest, we are a bit obsessive. We continuously tinker and tweak our product line because when you hit the sweet spot of function, simplicity, and style, it is always worth the extra effort.

After a decade in business, and millions of Tokers Pokers sold, the proof is in the pudding. Once you smoke a bowl with a Toker Poker, you will never smoke without one!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Counterfeit Toker Pokes have been a major problem for us. We were in the third year of operations and finally feeling like we were hitting our stride. We were moving out of our apartment/small office and buying our first house. The down payment was enough to make us squirm but we were confident that if the business continued to grow, we should be alright. 2 weeks after signing the closing documents, we get a message from a random Toker Poker fan from Connecticut. He was asking if the Toker Poker he had just purchased from Wal-Mart was indeed a legitimate Toker Poker product or a knock-off? My heart sunk when I saw the product he was holding was not a legitimate Toker Poker but a counterfeit item. I was locked into the largest investment of my life and I was certain that my business was about collapse! We had to buckle down and for the first time, protect the intellectual property (patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade dress, etc.) we had filed for years earlier. This lawsuit started in Oct. 2016 and is still ongoing! We expect it to conclude sometime late 2024, meaning we will have been in litigation for roughly 8 years! Since this first counterfeit item hit the market, we have dealt with nearly a dozen other counterfeit items which we have had to aggressively pursue in order to prevent any future sales or production. There are very few companies who have the resiliency to aggressively and consistently protect their IP. This is an extremely important aspect to our success and never thought in our wildest dreams that this invention would require the amount of time, energy and money which we have invested into the protection of our product.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

My co-founder and business partner have a very unique story. The co-founder of Toker Poker is my wife. Were dating in college well before we came up with the Toker Poker. It wasn’t until shortly after our senior year did we create the first prototypes. Over the last 10 years, we have scaled out our business, got married and now have three beautiful kiddos. Running a business with your life partner has amazing rewards but it certainly comes with a lot of challenges.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tokerpoker.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/toker_poker/?hl=en