OCTOBER 2008: AROUND THE STATE
ON
THE BALL
In 1971, at the age of 15, Judy Bochenski joined a team of
“ping pong diplomats” on a trip to China that
helped pave the way for President Nixon’s breakthrough
state visit a year later. Today Judy Bochenski Hoarfrost is the
CEO of Portland-based paddlepalace.com, the nation’s top
seller of table tennis equipment, with $2.5 million in annual
sales, eight employees and its own line of ping-pong robots.
The former national champion took a break from the daily
barrage of orders to discuss table tennis, online niche retail
and the surprisingly complicated world of ping-pong rubber.
How did
you get so good at table tennis?
My father played while he was in the service in Korea so he
was always interested in it. We always had a table in our
house. Any time we moved we had to find a house with a room big
enough for the table.
How did
you start the business?
My parents opened a table tennis club in downtown Portland at
the old Elk’s Club building. It was a big ballroom with
chandeliers and carved angels on the ceiling. It was like a
palace, so we called it Paddle Palace. People would come from
all over the world for the tournaments. Then the lease got
bought out and my father used that as seed money for starting
an equipment company.
Was there
any money in table tennis?
No. But my father was a real entrepreneur. He would hold a
tournament every month and find sponsors. He would make plaques
and do the calligraphy himself. Even the pop machine was
an important source of revenue. He would put fingernail polish
on the quarters to track where the money went. Years later I
would come across a quarter downtown with fingernail polish on
it and I would know where it came from.
The
equipment has changed a lot since then.
There are so many types of rubber it is incredible —
short pips, long pips, heavy spin, anti-topspin, combination
rackets. You can put one type of rubber on one side of your
paddle and another on the other side. Each type has different
sponge thicknesses. We’ll have to figure out how many
variations there are and put that number in our catalog.
Do you
make products?
We assemble things. And we have a brand that we’ve
developed, the Hunter brand. We also have Paddle Palace robots.
They are selling really well. You see that blue container out
there? It’s full of robots. I’m trying to get the
robots out to a bigger market. We’re going to be selling
on Amazon. We’re working on that.
If table
tennis were to take off, your position would be
strong.
Everyone I talk to loves table tennis, but not everyone thinks
of it as a sport. It’s a grassroots sport. You can have a
really good match between someone who is very old and a little
kid. It will always be around for that reason. But we always
feel that our sport has so much potential that hasn’t
been fulfilled. Compare it to soccer. Soccer used to be
nothing, but soccer did something to become huge. We need to
figure out how to do
that.
BEN JACKLET
Have an opinion?
E-mail feedback@oregonbusiness.com
