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Date: 11/22/2022
LONGMEADOW – Nate Duval, illustrator and owner of NateDuval.com and Blue Owl Production, has begun making and producing items for a pickleball brand called Dill Company.
Duval has been an independent illustrator, designer and perch producer for the last 15 years, working with an extensive list of clients big and small. As a longtime fan and player of racquet sports, he noticed a real buzz around pickleball the past few years, mostly fueled like many other things, by the pandemic with people finding new activities and hobbies to start. Duval played a few times the past year with his tennis friends and found the sport to be fun, fast, social, and unique.
“It’s a sport that seems to be having this youthful resurgence and growth around the country and was once known as a sport for older people,” Duval said. “It felt like a sport for everyone and with that, I felt developing a brand for it, would have a decent shot of catching on with a wider range of people, even amongst my current fanbase who mostly follows me for my work in the music and beer industry and the designs I have made in those fields for the last 15 years.”
He wanted to merge this fun and blossoming sport with his love and specialty of creating unique, eye-catching, bold art and design and producing unexpected, high-quality goods and merchandise. That’s when the idea for Dill Company emerged. Duval recently went live with the website and launched a few pieces of apparel and his first two high-quality paddles in October, which are on sale at dillcompany.com and nateduval.com. So far, Duval has received excellent feedback and sales on the paddles and already has the wheels turning in his head on what’s next.
“I want to give this brand a unique visual presence in the marketplace,” Duval said. “My graphics are being masterfully produced on high, pro-level quality paddles which make them play as good as they look.”
His current goal is to see if this initial interest carries over into and through the holiday season. Based on current sales projections, he hopes to have his initial order of paddles sold by the end of the holiday season. Then he’ll start building out a few new designs to expand the paddle and equipment side of things in the spring. Using his years of experience making and marketing merchandise online, Duval wants to take what he’s learned making limited edition rock merchandise and call some of his artist friends along the way to help him fill out the line with different looks and styles and to create fun, limited edition designs. It’s similar to what he’s done with screen printed rock posters to help keep interest high and get new audiences involved to create a bit of e-commerce urgency.
From there, his second-tier goal will be to develop an even more serious, pro-level, highest performance level premium line of paddles. He plans to expand the apparel side of this line to be on par with what he’s done with the PLTFRM Tennis brand as well to give the pickleball playing audience a cool line of goods and clothes to wear to keep them looking great on and off the court.
“I always love the sourcing and production side of making a fun and new physical item,” Duval replied. “I’ve never really made anything quite like this before, so the testing and tweaking the paddle itself side of the product design was a lot of fun.” He continued, “When I saw the models/paddles that I deemed to be the winners come to life with my art printed on them, it was the cherry on top of a very rewarding new product development project for me.”
To learn more about Dill Company, visit dillcompany.com. For information about Nate Duval, go to nateduval.com or @nateduval on Instagram.