innovate arkansas

Ensuring that all balls bounce its way is just part of the process for one Harrison startup and Innovate Arkansas client.

ReBounces has developed, patented and marketed what it bills as the first cost-effective, bulk solution for repressurizing tennis balls. Its process extends the life of tennis balls several times past the first loss of bounce and, according to CFO Cannon Fletcher, allows clubs and coaches to reduce their annual tennis ball expense by 50 percent.

ReBounces' first product, the Green Tennis Machine, can hold more than 400 balls (six cases worth), potentially giving new life to 39,000 tennis balls a year (more than 540 cases). About the size of a smoker, it's marketed to clubs and instructors. The turn-around time to repressurize a batch of balls is roughly four days.

"With financing available, the purchase really moves from a capital-budget decision to a no-brainer," Fletcher said. "For under $200 a month, a club can purchase a GTM and then save $300-plus per cycle, up to eight cycles a month. Do that math - it is quite a sales pitch."

You don't have to be a club or teaching pro to take advantage of ReBounces' services. Its repressurization service is aimed at the recreational player. Clients can purchase balls from ReBounces' inventory or send in their own balls for repressurization. Anyone in the lower 48 with 200 or more tennis balls qualifies for the firm's free shipping service (ReBounces will split the shipping costs with its Hawaii clients).

"All they have to do is contact us, and we will e-mail them a free shipping label," Fletcher said.

In business for 18 months, ReBounces has provided extended life to more than 150,000 balls - and that's with no advertising budget. Marketing has been strictly word of mouth. But the Green Tennis Machine is beginning to create an international buzz in the tennis community, having been featured on NPR's "Living on Earth," in National Geographic and even in Oprah magazine. And plans to launch ReBounces Europe are under way.

"Tennis balls are much more expensive abroad than they are domestically," Fletcher said. "Players in other countries can pay as much as three to five times what we currently pay here in the U.S."

ReBounces' goal is for the GTM to become a tennis club staple alongside racquet-stringing machines and ball machines.

"The current target is 10,000-plus facilities with more than four courts and multiple teaching pros on staff," Fletcher said.

ReBounces is well on its way to meeting that goal, and one of its pilot facilities, T Bar M Racquet Club in Dallas, is nationally recognized for its juniors program.

"The general manager tells us the machine paid for itself in less than three months and that their juniors are excited to play a part in the whole recycling process," Fletcher said.

Recycling is another component to the ReBounces experience. ReBounces will recycle - for free - all tennis balls that can no longer be repressurized, saving hordes of old tennis balls from trash heaps worldwide.

"Most clients can recharge balls two to five times," Fletcher said. "Eventually, the felt quality and rubber are too compromised for further court use. At that point, our clients can utilize our free recycling service."

(And yes, that recycling service, the first of its kind in the nation, includes sending old balls to nursing homes for use with walkers.)

Currently, Fletcher is joined at ReBounces by founder and CEO Bill Dirst, a former high school tennis coach whom he met while both were in the MBA program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and marketing chief Grant Garland. He expects balls to continue bouncing ReBounces' way, hence the forthcoming hiring of a sales team and office staff.

ReBounces is even looking into adapting the technology to other sports that use non-bladder balls, such as paddle ball, popular in South America and Europe, and racquetball.

Throughout the firm's growth process, Innovate Arkansas has been "a great champion for us as well as a great sounding board," Fletcher said, and IA even helped ReBounces secure the services of a company that will provide GTM financing to clubs.

Fletcher said despite the perception that tennis is "down" in America, numbers were up in terms of people playing tennis - more than 30 million last year.

Those 30 million tennis players will need fresh balls to serve and volley, and ReBounces plans to oblige them.