Revolin Sports

Revolin Sports is a Holland-based manufacturer of ecofriendly sports products, including its Revolin Pickleball line of high-performance paddles. Born in 2019 from the love for pickleball of its founder and CEO Hugh Davis, Revolin is shaking up the fastest-growing sport in the United States with its patented technology and contributing to West Michigan’s manufacturing heritage.

With support from Entrepreneurship and Innovation programming through the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) and the state’s network of MEDC-supported SmartZones, Revolin has attracted investments – including from the Michigan Outdoor Innovation Fund – and accolades, including Sustainable Business of the Year from the Michigan Sustainable Business Forum and representing the GR SmartZone at SXSW in 2024.

A Good Sport

Growing up in Holland, Davis says he loved playing sports and specialized in tennis and lacrosse. In high school, he started a lacrosse repair business . “I would take lacrosse sticks and modify, upgrade or repair them. I’m grateful to my parents for letting me have a little workshop in our garage where I had accumulated all sorts of glues, materials, strings and fibers. I had a hands-on appreciation for how sporting goods were built and how I could repair them or make them better.”

Davis learned about pickleball in high school and considered it a natural transition.

“At first I thought, ‘This is kind of a weird sport.’ But I grew to love that I could play with all my friends, my parents, my siblings – even with my grandma and grandpa. I love sports, but so many sports were inaccessible. Tennis takes years of practice, but with pickleball, with an hour or two of training, you can hit the ball around and have real matches.”

 At the time, pickleball was still a hobby sport; no public courts existed, so Davis and his friends would spray paint lines on their driveways and set up temporary nets to play whenever they could. By the end of high school, Davis was playing competitive pickleball and won his first tournament in 2014.

From Hobby to Handicraft

Davis attended the University of Michigan (U-M), studying engineering and materials science while  playing pickleball with friends. It was in college that necessity served up some inspiration.

“We kept breaking our paddles, so I learned how to repair them, trying to make them better, get more power and look cooler,” he said. “I was studying industrial engineering and learning how to create better products and systems to manufacture. I thought, ‘I’m going to build a paddle.’”

Davis built his first prototype in the summer of 2016 after his freshman year, using extra materials borrowed from one of his professors – carbon fiber, foam and epoxy resins – with manufacturing methods he’d just learned at school.

“I started to get obsessed, and kept building prototypes year after year,” he said. “Then my sister Greta, who was in high school at the time, joined me. When I was away at school, she used my shop to make prototypes and test them. Meanwhile, the sport was growing in popularity, and I was starting to play with the idea of starting a business. I did a couple of pitch competitions, and the rest is history.”

According to Revolin’s website, the Davis siblings tried over 250 material combinations and developed over 400 prototypes over the course of five years to perfect their product.

The Fastest-Growing Sport in the U.S.

Davis says he started noticing more interest in pickleball in 2019, when courts were built in Holland and lines were added to courts around Ann Arbor. In 2020, when Davis was completing his master’s degree at U-M, the sport’s popularity boomed thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Everyone was talking about pickleball, and I thought, ‘We’re really onto something. We’re early on, it’s blowing up and we’ve got a good product coming.’ It was this convergence of the sport I loved and an opportunity to apply my education and learning. My master’s thesis was a fully recyclable material that could be used in a pickleball paddle. I thought, ‘All right, let’s dive in.’”

A few months after graduation, Davis launched Revolin out of his parents’ garage with his sister and his girlfriend, Sophie, who worked as their marketing person. The company’s name comes from the combination of the words “revolutionary” and “linen.”

“When I was discovering these new materials – the ones we use in our paddles today – they were flax, linen, hemp linen and volcanic linen. They’re these technical fabrics that come from these unique materials, and as I was thinking about revolutionizing sporting goods with these high-tech linen materials, the name Revolin was born from that idea.”

Game, Set, Match

To support Revolin’s launch in 2020, Davis relied on the network of contacts and connections he made during his time at U-M to get the guidance his company needed to thrive.

“As I was getting into the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Ann Arbor and taking classes, I got connected to Ann Arbor SPARK. I learned about the Small Business Development Center, where I received investor tech coaching from Scott Taylor. When I was ready to graduate and my mentors knew I would be heading back to the Holland area to start my business, they told me I had to talk with Lakeshore Advantage.”

Lakeshore Advantage serves as an MEDC-supported SmartZone for the Holland region, providing startup and entrepreneurial services. Davis and the Revolin team participated in Lakeshore Advantage’s SURGE program, a business incubator for product and technology startups.

Through SURGE, Revolin received two Business Accelerator Fund (BAF) awards, both totaling $40,000: one in 2020 to assist with marketing, product launch and scaling, and another in 2023 for website and marketing assistance. Early on, Davis’s sister and girlfriend joined the SURGE BoostCamp, a 10-week proof-of-concept program featuring a cohort of fellow early entrepreneurs, on behalf of the company.

“We thought it was really cool, because we were around like-minded people going through the same issues,” Davis said. “The program gave opportunities to earn investments and meet with new partners and marketing agencies. Very quickly, we also started working with their Entrepreneurial Support Network, getting grants to help fund our first product design, our first logo and our first website design. Even now, we continue to use them for various resources. They’ve got a great network of service providers and ecosystem of entrepreneurs. It’s tough starting a business, so to have that is invaluable.”

“It has been a joy for SURGE to support the Revolin Sports team on their growth journey,” said Nora VandenBrink, vice president of entrepreneurship at Lakeshore Advantage. “Since the company’s launch we have had the pleasure of connecting them with mentorship and trusted service providers, capital resources, and local talent pipelines. They are true partners in our ecosystem, actively supporting fellow SmartZone startups and investing in the community through partnerships like the Holland Charter Township Community Center, where they provided pickleball paddles for public use. We are proud of their hard work, dedication to growing their venture and ongoing commitment to being strong stewards of our community.”

In addition to MEDC’s support through the state’s network of SmartZones, Revolin was one of the first investments made by the Michigan Outdoor Recreation Innovation Fund in 2024, managed by Jim Tenzillo through InvestUP.

Launched in early 2023, the Michigan Outdoor Innovation Fund aims to bolster Michigan’s outdoor industry by investing in early-stage startups that demonstrate strong potential for innovation and sustainability. Investments range from $50,000 to $250,000 in Michigan-based companies commercializing cutting-edge technologies that enhance the enjoyment, sustainability or accessibility to the outdoor recreation industry.

The Long Game

While Revolin is focused on building its Revolin Pickleball brand, Davis sees various uses for the company’s materials, from skis and surfboards to office furniture. With the growth of Revolin Pickleball providing cash flow, the company is looking to invest in opportunities to expand its product lines and offerings.

“We see ourselves growing our own manufacturing and R&D capabilities in-house. We’ve proven our technology with Revolin Pickleball, and now we have a really strong case study to go work with other sports brands and eventually marine and office furniture to say, ‘Hey, how can we help make your products lighter, more durable and more sustainable?’”

With two patents pending on their pickleball paddles and material designs as well as two licensed technologies, Revolin is poised to be a key player in West Michigan’s manufacturing industry.

“Especially in West Michigan, we’ve got a major furniture industry and marine and boat manufacturing. Of course, Detroit has the automotive industry, and the state also has aerospace sprinkled throughout. All of this is very relevant to sporting goods; we use very similar machines and materials.

Often these companies all feed each other with new ideas and materials we might want to use. We use flax and hemp fibers; those materials are used in the automotive industry, but we’re putting a whole new spin on them. Or I can reach out to our local boat manufacturer, Composite Builders, and ask if they can build a panel for pickleball paddles instead of a boat floor. It allows us to work with smart, knowledgeable people who have done this for decades and reduce our barrier to entry.

Hopefully we can continue to help as we move toward more sustainable, ecofriendly and renewable materials. We can have a little bit of an impact.”

Learn how the MEDC and its partners across the state help serve companies like Revolin.