Gino Palumbo stared in awe at the lightweight metal golf shaft in his hands.
After three years in development, the one-of-a-kind shaft, made by fusing a nickel alloy coating to a graphite core using nanotechnology, was ready to undergo production.
"It was definitely a 'wow' moment," Mr. Palumbo, founder, president and CEO of Toronto's Integran Technologies Inc., recalls of the first time he held the finished product.
Historically, a developer of metals for the aerospace and defence industries, Integran felt frustrated by the slow-and-cautious approach of creating metal coatings for those industries and it decided to opt for quicker-to-market solutions.
The company had grown slowly but steadily thanks to R&D financing to help it through the lengthy process of developing nanotechnologies for defence and aerospace. But Integran wanted to see big revenue streams flowing within years, not decades.
In 2004, it branched out into the lucrative $25-billion (U.S.) sports equipment industry, where cutting-edge technology, lightness and strength command a premium price.
Integran decided to start by designing and making golf club shafts because golf is one of the largest athletic product markets, and because golfers are willing to pay big money for gear.
"Some people call golf clubs jewellery for men — they're willing to pay relatively large amounts of money for it," Mr. Palumbo notes.
The gambit worked.
Since the True Temper Epic shaft was introduced in January, 2007, about 75,000 have been sold, bringing in enough money to allow Integran to pursue other sports equipment markets.
HEAD has since released tennis and squash racquets made from Integran's nanotechnology and a line of nano-engineered baseball bats is being produced by a premium bat supplier, Mr. Palumbo says (adding that he can't yet release the company's name). A line of bicycle parts is also coming.
While the leap into the golf shaft market is a success in its own right, it also generated an unanticipated bonus for Integran: It has boosted sales in its defence and aerospace divisions, where Integran designs nanotechnology applications such as more durable helicopter rotor blades and a corrosion- and friction-resistant exterior for a stealth aircraft.
Nanotechnology is the science of manipulating and controlling matter at the atomic level, and selling the idea of nano-engineered metals was never easy for Integran.
Potential customers couldn't get their heads around the technology, which involves creating metals with a grain size 1,000 times smaller than regular metals, thereby multiplying their tensile strength and hardness.
The development of the Epic golf shaft erased much of that confusion, Mr. Palumbo says. Suddenly, Integran had a tested, tangible example of how nanotechnology could make something lighter yet stronger.
The result was a boost in contracts across the company, including Integran's aerospace and defence work. Since January, 2007, Integran has more than doubled its total work force, to 55 from 25. It tripled revenue in 2007 and quadrupled it in 2008, Mr. Palumbo says.
And a golf shaft is often taken to sales meetings to showcase the technology.
"People hold it and they feel how light it is and how strong it is and suddenly a light bulb starts going on in their head ... about all the other applications where they could use it," Mr. Palumbo says. "It's a rather convincing way to show that nanotechnology has made its way out of the petri dish."
Special to The Globe and Mail
Connect with Gino Palumbo
Mr. Palumbo took your questions on his experience. Click here to read the discussion.
Expert insight
"One of the challenges with traditional brainstorming and developing new ideas or solutions to problems is that people are stuck in a box to start with," says Barry Cross, an operations and technology expert who teaches at Queen's School of Business and runs a private consulting firm. He explores some of Integran's business strategies and the marketing boost it received from its new Epic golf shaft in an online Q&A.
Click here to read the interview with Mr. Cross.
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