Avery Raises Seed Round For Own Paddle Company
No sweet spot, savory one instead, stamped with founder's face; $1.2 million at $6.4 million valuation.
Club's facilities subcommittee weighs whether paddle violates signage bylaws.
Co-captain declines allocation, asks about team discount.
By Anita Bath·Staff Reporter
Kyle Avery holds a Savory paddle at the Rowayton hut, his own unsmiling face printed dead center of it.
“The face is the differentiator. You're not just buying a paddle. You're buying into a paddle.”
ROWAYTON, Conn., Sept. 6 —Kyle Avery, who co-captains Rowayton E, closed a seed round Friday for Savory Paddles, a startup whose sole product removes the paddle's traditional sweet spot in favor of a savory one, printed with a photograph of Mr. Avery's own face. The round totals $1.2 million at a $6.4 million valuation, according to a term sheet reviewed by the paper.
The paddle is unchanged in every other respect: a solid, perforated face of the regulation gritty composite, rimmed and mounted on a short handle, identical to those used on all eight Rowayton sides. Where the sweet spot customarily sits, dead center of the face, Savory Paddles has substituted a matte, four-inch oval bearing Mr. Avery's likeness, unsmiling, in a collared shirt.
"The face is the differentiator," Mr. Avery said Friday, asked why the paddle depicts him rather than, say, a logo. "You're not just buying a paddle. You're buying into a paddle." He declined to say whether subsequent funding rounds would require an updated photograph.
Savory Paddles has pre-sold 214 units, all but six of them to Rowayton members, according to a company spokesman who is also Mr. Avery. The product line currently consists of one paddle, one finish, and one face.
The club's facilities subcommittee, which ordinarily confines itself to deck resurfacing and screen tension, has scheduled an emergency session for Thursday to determine whether a paddle bearing a player's photograph constitutes unauthorized signage under the club bylaws. "We have a section on banners. We do not have a section on faces," said Peter Koerner, the subcommittee's assistant facilities chair, who was granted the title for this purpose alone.
Sergey Chernysh, who captains Rowayton C — the team on which Mr. Avery is rated 36, twenty-fourth of twenty-seven players — declined to comment, saying the club's approach to consumer goods was beneath the concerns of serious men.
Nathan Snyder, a Rowayton C and D player, offered an unprompted analysis when reached at the hut. "What you're describing is a Veblen good," he said. "The paddle's utility is irrelevant. Its value lies entirely in its visibility — in the fact that the man across the net knows exactly whose face he is hitting." Asked whether he intended to buy one, Mr. Snyder said the question missed the point entirely, and did not answer it.
Andrew Simone, who co-captains Rowayton E with Mr. Avery, said he had not been offered an allocation in the round and did not want one. "I want nothing to do with it," Mr. Simone said, then asked, unprompted, whether E team players would receive a discount. He was told they would not.
A single case of the paddles sat behind the counter in the hut Friday afternoon, sixty units deep, each one printed with the same face, stacked eye level, watching the room.
