Table tennis startup aims for casual-player market

CounterStrike Table Tennis CEO Eric Baker hopes his line of affordable, high quality paddles will lure casual players to stick with the game. (IBJ photo/Eric Learned)

A table tennis startup in Fishers is attempting to foster new interest in the niche sport by hooking casual players up with high quality paddles at affordable prices.

CounterStrike Table Tennis CEO Eric Baker reverse engineered competitors’ paddles, developed over 20 prototypes and tested them against a ping pong-playing robot in his garage for two years before bringing his own line of table tennis equipment to market in January.

Now, he’s selling his International Table Tennis Federation-approved products online and courting training facilities across the state to try to find an affiliate that will carry his products and remove some of the barriers to entry for casual or burgeoning players.

“A lot of the people I’ve talked to, they have an issue with newcomers coming in and using the $5 paddle from their grandpa,” Baker said. “Their equipment can’t compete, so they get discouraged and never come back.”

Baker wants to solve that by filling what he sees as a gap in the market—quality equipment that doesn’t break the bank.

He said bigger companies like Japan-based Butterfly or Sweden-based Stiga mostly target serious table tennis players, and they charge upwards of $300 or $400 for their paddles.

That’s not who Baker wants to cater to, though.

“There’s such a huge market for a transitional piece of equipment to take people from playing for fun with friends to being more serious about it,” Baker said.

Baker’s goal with CounterStrike is to get professional-level equipment into the hands of beginners (and perhaps eventually professionals) by selling paddles for between $40 and $80.

“Just like wanting to wear the Nikes [that] Michael Jordan wears, serious table tennis players want to play with the equipment specific sponsored Olympians use,” Baker said. “I am targeting a core demographic in between a casual player and nationally ranked player. This places a stronger focus on my product’s price point and that it is 100% legal to use in tournaments.”

A table tennis business plan

As a teenager, Baker hounded his father for a table tennis table and remained steadfast in his dedication despite his dad’s assurances that he’d play once and never use it again. After his father finally relented, Baker said he and his friends played every day—multiple times a day—for years. He continued to play through his high school’s club team and eventually went on to manage the table tennis club at Anderson University.

“That’s where I noticed a need,” he said. “There were a bunch of kids that would love to play, but they didn’t have anything and they definitely didn’t have $300 because they’re poor college kids.”

Though CounterStrike is just a one-man operation for now, Baker is working with several Chinese manufacturers that have experience producing table tennis equipment for bigger companies. He said he plans to hire additional help and expand into a larger space once fulfillment gets to be too much for him to handle on his own. Right now, he’s working to trademark a slogan for the brand and building his customer base.

Baker earned degrees in business information systems and business management, with a focus in entrepreneurship, before advancing to earn a master’s degree in business administration from Anderson.

He launched his own web design company in 2008 called Ignition Marketing Solutions, and he continues to use those search engine optimization and search engine marketing skills in his current role as the senior director of marketing and communications for Carmel-based Kittle Property Group.

Curtiss Quirin, a business adviser with the Indiana Small Business Development Center’s central region, said those skills will be crucial for CounterStrike’s online sales.

“Websites are plentiful. But really, it’s like buying a pet. You’ve got a dog, but now you have the care and feeding that goes with it. A website is only as good as getting eyeballs on it,” Quirin said. Baker’s “expertise in SEO will be paramount here to driving people to know about the company and driving people to the website to learn more and hopefully place an order.”

He said the specificity of CounterStrike’s target demographic also gives it a competitive advantage.

“Every successful marketing endeavor starts with knowing who your target market is,” Quirin said. “If you start with the sports market and drill down, CounterStrike’s is indoor sports, then table tennis, then equipment, then paddles. Specifically, they’re into custom paddles. They’re almost a niche within a niche within a niche within a niche, and that could be a good thing.”

Quirin said focusing on one type of customer will allow Baker to tailor CounterStrike’s search engine optimization to drive revenue.

Baker said his website currently averages 600 users and 50 to 60 sales each week. He’s invested roughly $60,000 so far to keep 4,500 products on hand, and he’s hoping to become profitable around the $100,000 investment mark.

“Based on what we’re doing now, it’s slowly, every single week, getting better,” Baker said. “I’ve started ecommerce businesses before, and I know those first two or three years you just eat it. For a product like this, you’ve got to wait for the SEO to catch up.”

While Baker waits, he’s scouting out table tennis clubs and facilities across the state to make in-person connections that could lead to long-term relationships.

Finding partners to play ball

Lee Seibold opened his own table tennis facility in Fort Wayne in August of last year. Whack-A-Ball Table Tennis Training Center is a 1,500-square-foot facility that gives members 24/7 access to four tables for tournament-style play.

“When I contacted [manufacturers] Joola and Butterfly and Killer Spin, they didn’t even really seem to care that I wanted to be an affiliate with them. They already had their ducks in a row, and I wouldn’t help them at all. It felt like I was in their way,” Seibold said. “I’ve had a chance to try all of Eric’s stuff and it’s really good, I’m impressed. It feels like real, professional equipment.”

The facility currently has a vending machine with table tennis balls, cheap paddles, snacks and drinks, but Seibold said he’s considering a non-exclusive partnership with Baker to feature CounterStrike products at his facility.

But getting into facilities is tough, especially because some have exclusive relationships with producers.

David Stout, owner of Indianapolis-based SpinBlock Table Tennis Center, is one of them. He’s been playing table tennis on and off for 35 years and started his first table tennis club at Carmel’s Monon Community Center in 2010. The club grew to 12 tables before Stout decided to establish his own facility with lighting and other amenities specifically tailored to the sport.

In 2018, he opened the 7,200-square-foot facility at 5252 W. 79th St. in Indianapolis. The club has more than 6,000 square feet of play area with 12 tables, as well as a pro shop. It’s the lone facility of its type in Indianapolis, and Stout said he has several members who come from Bloomington, Terre Haute, Richmond and beyond to train and get better.

“I regularly have people coming from 40, 50, 60 miles away to come play at our club on a weekly basis,” Stout said.

Baker reached out to Stout to ask him to carry CounterStrike products, but SpinBlock is a Joola-sponsored club. That means Stout exclusively sells and markets Joola products in exchange for a few thousand dollars worth of free equipment each year.

Stout said his contract with Joola “runs out in June or July, but I don’t know if I’m going to renew with them. It would be nice to sell some other equipment,” Stout said.

“If [CounterStrike] had good beginner- to intermediate-level equipment, rackets anywhere from $40 to $80, that would probably be a good price point for a lot of players—provided the quality is seen as good quality,” Stout said.

And that could be good for promoting the sport. Stout said many people are surprised his facility exists, he said, even though it’s the first result when you type “Indianapolis table tennis” into Google.

There could be renewed national interest in the sport now that USA Table Tennis announced this month that the 2021 World Table Tennis Championships will—for the first time ever—be held in a North American city. The event will take place in Houston, Texas, from Nov. 23- 29. Locally, SpinBlock is scheduled to host the 2021 Indiana State Championships on May 1 and 2.

Already, at Seibold’s Whack-A-Ball in Fort Wayne, roughly 90% of club members are newcomers without any equipment. Though simply picking up a higher quality paddle won’t suddenly turn an amateur into a pro, Seibold said equipping more players with affordable and high-quality gear could fill out those skill gaps to create more even matchups.

“He could sell a lot of equipment to these entry level players and save them a lot of money. They will get better, they will improve and their confidence will go up,” Seibold said. “If money is an object for new players, his company would be able to help them.”

Big competitors

Quirin said, after a brief review, he didn’t see many goliaths in the mid-range paddle market. However, that doesn’t mean CounterStrike is without competition.

Stout said although he only sells Joola equipment, he used to sell paddles from a Chinese company called Gambler that were in the same price range as CounterStrike’s products. Those paddles, he said, were often good enough for intermediate players’ needs until they got a taste of those higher-end, pricier paddles.

“The big challenge for CounterStrike is, now, so many people buy fairly cheap equipment on Amazon,” Stout said. “Everybody touts their rubber as the fastest, the spinniest, the best. But a lot of them are not.”

There’s a need in the market for affordable equipment that’s better than what’s available on Amazon or at a Dick’s Sporting Goods, Stout said. However, International Table Tennis Federation approval can be a costly and recurring cost. Stout said he’s heard of product manufacturers that eventually shut down because those costs were too high, and the products weren’t taken as seriously without that seal of approval.

Stout said it will be a challenge to lure loyal customers from well-established professional brands, and there are a lot of cheap alternatives for players that aren’t concerned with quality. He said, if CounterStrike is somehow able to convince that entry-level recreational player market, Baker might be able to work hard and make a little money.

“It’s just like opening this club,” Stout said. “It was hard to break even for the first few years and we are starting to kind of turn things around. I don’t think anybody is going to get rich in table tennis.”•