We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mike Hardy a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Mike, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

It was 2018, and I was introduced to pickleball by a friend. It seemed like a fun sport, and so I decided why not try to sell paddles online? We did what everyone else did – import the paddles from China, but we quickly learned that was a terrible business strategy. We focused on making the paddles ourselves with custom, one-off orders done quickly. By Christmas 2019, we knew there was demand for the product, so we focused all of our efforts solely on custom paddles and the rest is history.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I had no background. I just decided I wanted to sell pickleball paddles online and committed to doing whatever was necessary. Over the years, I’ve learned about manufacturing methods, all channels of digital marketing, team-building, hiring, firing, customer service and so much more. I’m most of proud of the fact that I have a hand in everything. While it’s not scalable if I do everything myself, I, at least, have the knowledge and can answer basic questions on almost every topic.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

We sell exclusively on our own website. We tried sites like Amazon, but it is a price driven marketplace where the lowest pricing usually wins, so pair that with the commissions, advertising, pick & pack fees, and it doesn’t really make financial sense to sell our product anywhere but our own website.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

We do manufacture our own products! We knew nothing about manufacturing. Ultimately, it was me who learned materials sciences, design, manufacturing techniques and processes. We do source raw materials, but it was a slow process of sampling, testing, and refining. There was a lot of trial and error, but we nailed it and are in a good place.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://dinkusa.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dink.usa/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dinkusacom