Exec bringing nanotechnology to sports gear

By: ANDREW PETERSON - For the North County Times | Wednesday, July 5, 2006 9:02 PM PDT ∞

CARLSBAD ---- Athletes and entrepreneurs search constantly for the "sweet spot" ---- be it a physical space on the head of a tennis racket or the favorable convergence in the mind's eye of such marketplace factors as supply, demand and opportunity.

Nanotechnology ---- that branch of technology concerned with the precise manipulation of individual atoms and molecules ---- is one of the most attractive sweet spots around for new businesses in a variety of fields.

For Edward Hughes, the 40-year-old chief executive officer of Carlsbad-based PowerMetal Technologies Inc., that field is sports equipment.

"Sporting goods traditionally is a very innovative marketplace, because people are always looking for better performance in their game," said Hughes, who had a dozen years of executive-level experience at such companies as TaylorMade-adidas Golf and Maxfli Golf, before founding PowerMetal in early 2005. "Consumers are willing to pay for innovation, and so new innovations come in at the premium end of the marketplace and then generally are cascaded down across the line."

As a component supplier, PowerMetal doesn't have a high public profile. But its products enhance equipment across a wide range of individual and team sports ---- from golf, cycling and water-skiing to baseball, lacrosse and hockey ---- and many more.

"In the case of tennis, we've used nanocrystalline foil to provide stiffness and strength to the throat of the rackets, and so to add power to the racket," Hughes said. "(With football) ... we can put the nanometal onto a helmet, and provide greater protection for the player."

Sports such as golf and baseball are governed by national regulatory bodies that, at least in the abstract, hinder PowerMetal's ability to fully exploit nanotech's benefits.

"Golf in particular is heavily regulated by the (U.S. Golfing Association), and so there are very clear restrictions on how fast the ball can come off the driver face," Hughes said. "What nanotechnology gives you is greater design parameters ---- freedoms ---- so you can basically make the face more forgiving. You can move weight around that gives you more (design) permutations to be able to optimize the launch of the ball, but (still) stay within the USGA regulations.

"You can view that as a glass half-empty and say, 'Yes, that's gonna constrain innovation,' " he continued, "but the consumer is constantly going to demand better and better product, and therefore it creates more challenges for companies to basically be able to come up with the innovations."

Hughes says the most challenging aspect of his work is staying focused.

"Everything seems like an opportunity, and so what we need to do is make sure that we really pick the right areas to focus on and then to apply the energy resources to do them," he said.

One area he has steered away from, for instance, is high-volume consumer electronics.

"That's an example of a marketplace that we haven't chased because we don't know whether the economics are right," he said.

A Cambridge University graduate in 1988 with a master's degree in applied economics, Hughes earned an MBA in business administration from Harvard Business School in 1993. He employs 20 people in Carlsbad (and says he would like to hire more), and an additional dozen or so in Toronto.

Hughes also says that he would like to build the PowerMetal name into what he calls an "ingredient" or "component" brand ---- a signifier of quality.

"If you look at a sporting goods product hopefully three or five years from now, you'd see a PowerMetal branding on it," he said. "You'd be familiar with that, and that would basically stand for 'nanotechnology-enabled,' which would give a kind of a 'Good Housekeeping' seal of approval that this product is gonna be good."

Beyond nano-enhanced sports equipment, Hughes says PowerMetal has developed a process that makes gold and silver virtually impervious to scratches.

"If you have an 18-karat watch, it's very easy to scratch, because the material is very soft," he said. "If you create the gold in a nanocrystalline form, then it basically is much stronger and much tougher, and so it doesn't scratch. We have a partnership with a Swiss company that's looking to commercialize and create the nanotechnology in the luxury goods business."

Related links:


http://www.powermetalinc.com/