When Greg Rudolph was a student at Arizona State University, he was walking on campus at night when he saw something strange. He approached a man whose skateboard seemed to be glowing and asked how he did it.
“Bro! I duct-taped Christmas lights to my board!” the man said.
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Today, Rudolph is the founder and CEO of Board Blazers, a company that sells multi-colored, adhesive lights for skateboards, and he attributes the original inspiration for the idea to that ASU skater-dude he stumbled upon late at night.
“I think what’s so much fun about it is that it’s kind of the classic small business, starting with a thousand dollars in a garage,” Rudolph said. “Today we’ve grown. We’ve sold lights in all 50 states and 15 countries around the world, so it’s really been a rather remarkable success.”
Board Blazers has been featured on FOX’s “Live Life and Win!”, and Rudolph himself was named one of Arizona’s “Top 35 Entrepreneurs under 35” by the Arizona Republic. The company has won a number of other awards for innovation and student entrepreneurship, and Board Blazers tops the Amazon.com charts for skateboard lighting.
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The product itself is dead simple. The small, circular lights twist on and off and stick to skateboards by means of a special adhesive. Rudolph said the lights are designed to be waterproof and strong enough to withstand the most extreme tricks, provided you tuck them behind the wheels.
Rudolph said the company has a “style and safety” approach to marketing Board Blazers. So while kids may think the lights are merely flair for their rides, parents have been buying them to help make nighttime boarding adventures a little less risky. The lights come in eight different colors, with more on the way, to satisfy your radical fashion sense.
And Board Blazers certainly isn’t lacking style when it comes to promotion, as the company sponsors champion freestyle skater Ricky Rodriguez and was featured in a viral Lil’ Wayne video at SXSW 2013.
Rudolph had some words of advice for entrepreneurs just starting their journey. He said there’s a big difference between growing your business and being busy.
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“I think the biggest lesson for me is that it’s really easy to confuse being busy with being productive,” Rudolph said. “As an early entrepreneur, when you’re the only person running the company, you have to do everything yourself. You can’t get bogged down in those actions that just help you maintain the business, but really focus on those things that help you grow the business every day.”
At $20 for a pack of four lights, Board Blazers make the perfect stocking stuffer for your more radically inclined friends and family. So, bro! What are you waiting for?
Images courtesy of Board Blazers
