Ever since I was young, whether I played the sport or not, I had always been obsessed with the technologies and innovations put into sports products every year. Therefore, working in the sports product industry has always been a passion and a goal of mine.
A year after graduating from Michigan State University, I decided to drop everything I was doing to pursue a career in physical therapy, and begin taking steps towards taking that dream and making it a reality. In doing so, I found that my best first step would be relocating to Portland, Oregon: The Home of the Sports Product Industry. The reason I moved was to attend the Sports Product Management Master’s Program at the University of Oregon.
During my time at the SPM Program, I was able to not only learn about the sports product industry from our classes, but go through the product creation lifecycle through our Integrative Product Capstone Project as well. Together, with five teammates who I happily call my friends now, we created Friction Skate Co., and developed our first product known as “The Coefficient” for our project. “The Coefficient” was an innovative skate shoe that we created to tackle two problems we saw with the skateboarding market: Durability and Sustainability. We set out to solve both problems with the singular solution of extending the product lifespan while utilizing sustainable materials. Our slogan was “Skate More, Less Waste”. As much fun as the Capstone Project was, we put it on hold to work in the industry while pursuing new experiences and knowledge.
Thanks to my experiences from both UO SPM and various roles in the sports product industry, I have been able to develop fresh ideas and come with optimism to innovate and create new products. My goals are simple. The first is to innovate not only from a product perspective, but a sustainability perspective as well. I believe that there are many ways we can create sustainable products and processes to reduce our impact on the environment as an industry. The second goal is to do what others in the industry have done for me, and that is to inspire the future generation through innovative products and sports!