GRIP Equipment

A few weeks ago, the founder of GRIP Equipment gave us a visit in Materials and Processes.  Justin Atwater Taylor, who launched GRIP Equipment, is not only a professional disc golfer, but also attended the University of Kansas.  He began fabricating the GRIP disc golf bag as his thesis project during college.  During his presentation, he described his entire process of fabricating a product and starting a business.  Taylor started off by observing, interviewing, and giving surveys to disc golfers around the United States.  He studied how players interacted with their equipment, and found out what worked and what didn’t work during their experience.  He took all of this info, and turned it into a functional and balanced gear bag that is comfortable and serves many uses.  Taylor created many different prototypes and tested them on the top disc golfers, and refined each model until the final bag.  He worked with many outside fabricators, including ones from around the world.  He explained how he had to communicate with these fabricators to get the results he wanted, through typed word and photo editing.  Taylor showed us all of his prototypes and the final bag design.  He presented his process, which made us aware of the steps we must take to start our own business.