One of the best parts of being an engineer is knowing how to develop products. Being able to assemble a team with the right kind of talent accelerates bringing products to market. Our goal at Creating The Difference is to improve bowler education.
We had an idea for a book called The Tournament Mindset. That led us to develop a backpack with supplies to help bowlers perform better. One of the products we included was a bowling ball cleaner. So we decided to build our own. We had 3 main goals when developing the cleaner
- Build a cleaner that was effective at removing dirt and oil in real time.
- The cleaner had to have a increased performance to it.
- It had to smell great.
Our research & development team of chemists, engineers and bowlers worked on a formula which cleaned the bowling ball’s surface without changing it. Not changing the surface was key because you can’t use a product during USBC certified competition if it changes the surface of the bowling ball. However, we also wanted to enhance the performance of the ball. So we engineered the formula to deep clean the subsurface of the ball which is where the pores are. By deep cleaning the pores, we could enhance performance without changing the ball surface. This allowed us to have a product that could be used during USBC certified competition and still enhance the performance.
The final part of developing a great product is the marketing aspect. We knew we had an effective cleaner on our hands. Now we had to figure out how to make it memorable. We needed something simple and easy to remember. In the word’s of Zeke Bayt on a recent Periscope stream, “It’s purple and it has stuff in it.” What better name than “That Purple Stuff”?
We wanted to show the benefits of this cleaning technology. So we live streamed a test showing the performance difference That Purple Stuff makes.
A lot of products clean but how many work to maintain ball performance in real time?
We wanted That Purple Stuff to work quickly and effectively on the ball in real time. So we developed our CtD Microfiber Cleaning Pad. This pad is designed to hold That Purple Stuff in it while you clean your bowling ball with microfiber each shot. The back side of the pad is designed to stay in your hand, and give you some grip to hold onto making cleaning easy and effective. No more folding your towel or trying to figure out how to get it to stay on the ball rack or scoring monitor. Since the pad holds the material inside of it, you can put some of That Purple Stuff on the pad at the beginning of league or tournament play and it will last for 3 games. This picture shows a new towel on the left and a towel used after 3 games on the right. When you combine the microfiber with That Purple Stuff, you get a true deep cleaning.
That Purple Stuff not only breaks down dirt and oil from the lane; it also restores the tacky feeling that your ball had when it was new. Because it bonds to the subsurface of the coverstock you can feel that the ball is tacky even after bowling with the ball. In fact, you can hear the ball squeak with your hand once it’s clean.
For more information check out this link.
That Purple Stuff and the CtD Microfiber Pad are available for purchase here.