TECH-REC
TECH-REC
Pittsburgh companies provide the science behind the sports
By: Tim Hayes
Applying technology into sports and sports equipment is not a game for the faint-hearted. But the thrill of victory – when you hit on an idea that really works, that you can protect, and that finds a market to exploit – sure beats the agony of defeat any day.
William Gardner, President of Loyalhanna-based Smart Parts Paintball Company, knows all about that.
“I started out in 1989, right out of grad school at Emory,” Gardner recalled. “At that point, I had no technical background, but I came from family where people had run their own businesses. I went to vo-tech school in Johnstown and started to combine academic and manufacturing knowledge. About that time, I fell in love with paintball, found it to be a terrifically interesting sport, and decided this is what I wanted to get into. From then to now, we’ve built Smart Parts into a $30 million company.
“We have 30 patents, and have added lots of technology to this sport,” he said. “Smart Parts introduced the first electronic paintball marker, solenoid valve, timer and switch. These innovations changed the sport overnight. It’s very hard to find a paintball gun today that’s not electronic. It cost us $6 million in patent battles to get this technology secured, but we did, and now we can license it out. We’re recognized as a technological leader in the sport.”
“The most defining product for us is the ION gun, which features a high-end electronic marker technology,” he said. “The technology was first developed in 1994 with our earlier gun models, Shaker and Impulse. After we went through years of patent battles, we were able to take this high-end technology to the lower end of the market. This made our competition irrelevant in terms of price and patent protection. We could sell a much better gun at a much better price.
“The concept was to take this advanced technology and make it available to the market at the right price levels,” explained Gardner. “We had to start a company in China to achieve the cost advantages required for certain elements of the ION gun, while also investing in the finest machining we could find.”
But all that thinking, planning, fighting, and investing paid off. “Once the ION was introduced, the company doubled in size in one year,” Gardner said.