Episode 140: Double Danger Pinball

Pinball Profile·podcast_episode·17m 11s·held·Jul 10, 2018

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.025

TL;DR

Double Danger Pinball founders discuss merchandise business growth and Pinball Profile shirt collaboration.

Summary

Jeff Teolis interviews Jay Holopeter and Robert Hogard from Double Danger Pinball, a merchandise and apparel company that has grown from 24 initial products in October 2015 to a diverse catalog including shirts, hoodies, enamel pins, buttons, patches, and custom tournament trophies. The conversation covers Double Danger's artist collaborations, international shipping, and their new partnership to produce Pinball Profile branded merchandise, with special pre-order discounts for ReplayFX.

Key Claims

Double Danger Pinball was founded in October 2015, with first sale occurring 28 days after launch
high confidence · Jay Holopeter directly states founding date and 28-day timeline to first sale
First Double Danger sale was a sticker pack to Don from A A Pinball Podcast approximately 28 days after October 2015 founding
high confidence · Jay confirms this was a sticker pack to Don, who has since retired from the podcast
Double Danger works with artists from across North America, Europe, and internationally including California, North Carolina, Chicago, Spain, and others
high confidence · Jay describes artist recruitment process and geographic distribution
Earring product line was Robert's idea and initially underperformed due to small female audience, but became successful as more women entered pinball
high confidence · Jay recounts the earring strategy and notes they've been re-run three times
Australia is Double Danger's biggest and furthest customer market, along with Canada and Western Europe
high confidence · Jay states Australia is their biggest and furthest customer by region
Pinball Profile podcast has had over 300 guest appearances
high confidence · Jeff Teolis states 'the last time I looked at was over 300 different people have been on'
Double Danger will have a booth at ReplayFX with Dan Burfield and Brian Holderman
high confidence · Jeff mentions their attendance and booth partners at ReplayFX
Pre-orders placed by July 15th deadline will receive free delivery at Pinberg/ReplayFX
high confidence · Jeff and Jay confirm July 15th deadline for free shipping promotion with code REPLAYFX

Notable Quotes

“October of 2015? Is that when it was? That sounds right. Yeah. Actually, was it during a tournament even? It might have been. It was right after a tournament. And Robert and I had discussed it prior to that.”
Jay Holopeter @ ~3:30 — Establishes founding origin story of Double Danger Pinball
“My background is graphic design and fine art. Robert is an artist as well. He's got computer background. So we sort of, I don't know, we actually met outside of Cactus Jack's right after the tournament. And I said, you know what, let's just do this.”
Jay Holopeter @ ~4:00 — Describes founding team backgrounds and impulsive decision to start the company
“We actually launched with international shipping, and Canada has been a big market for us, and Australia has been a big market for us. Yeah, Australia is a huge market, honestly. Western Europe is a big market.”
Jay Holopeter @ ~22:00 — Highlights international expansion success and market geography
“At the beginning, I'm not going to lie, I balked at it a little bit. But that's been a really good product, and people really like it.”
Jay Holopeter @ ~18:30 — Reflects on initial skepticism about earring product but eventual market success
“We wanted something for everyone. And I think pins and buttons, and we call them the smalls, are things that almost anyone can pick up at the show or online.”
Jay Holopeter @ ~17:00 — Articulates pricing and accessibility strategy for merchandise
“There is another one that is, I've had hundreds and hundreds of people on this show. I think the last time I looked at was over 300 different people have been on. So I thought, boy, you know, one of the guys wrote back to me and said, you know, if you had a pinball profile shirt, I would wear it because I've been on the show.”
Jeff Teolis @ ~9:30 — Explains design rationale for Pinball Profile Special Guest shirt

Entities

Double Danger PinballcompanyJay HolopeterpersonRobert HogardpersonJeff Teolisperson Pinball Profilemedia Cactus Jack'svenueReplayFXeventFreeplay Floridaevent

Signals

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community_signal: Double Danger Pinball has established itself as a major merchandise partner for pinball community brands and events, producing artist-designed products, tournament trophies, and branded apparel for podcasts and venues
high · Company expanded from 24 initial products to diverse catalog including Pinball Profile collaboration; produces custom merchandise for Buffalo Pinball; creates show exclusives at major events
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community_signal: Growing female participation in pinball community is reflected in merchandise demand, particularly for earrings which initially underperformed but became successful repeat product
high · Jay notes earrings were initially slow-selling, then 'as more women got into pinball, they started disappearing' and have been re-run three times
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content_signal: Pinball Profile podcast has achieved significant scale with 300+ guest appearances and is expanding into merchandise monetization and independent website presence
high · Jeff Teolis states 'the last time I looked at was over 300 different people have been on' and podcast recently launched pinballprofile.com independent of third-party platforms
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venue_signal: Cactus Jacks in Oklahoma City has emerged as a major pinball destination with 50+ machines and tournament infrastructure, representing successful community-focused arcade revival
high · Venue recently purchased by pinball enthusiast; hosts Stern Open tournaments attracting players from multiple states; maintains curated mix of vintage and modern machines
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market_signal: Double Danger Pinball has achieved significant international market penetration, with Australia identified as largest customer base by geography, plus established European distributor

Transcript

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0:00

it's time for another pinball profile i'm your host jeff teals you can find our group on facebook we're also on twitter at pinball profile emails pinball profile at gmail.com please subscribe on either itunes stitcher or google play and check out our new website what pinball profile.com and that's why I've got these special guests on right now to talk about that. Jay Holopeter and Robert Hogard from Double Danger Pinball. How are you guys doing? We're good. Thank you for joining us. Oklahoma is the base for you, Jay, correct? That is correct. Oklahoma City. I've got to get down to Cactus Jacks, I guess. Oh, absolutely.

0:48

Never been. Do you want to tell me about that? I know the tournament's fantastic. It is. Actually, the guy that's sort of the head of the tournaments here hosts, I don't know how many tournaments he hosts a year here. The big one is the Papa Tournament, of course, that they just had, what, about a month ago, I think. Yeah, it was actually a stern open. I'm sorry, a stern open. And it's a big tournament. We get people from all the surrounding states. I think California, Colorado this time, maybe even further than that. The guy that won, was he from Pittsburgh even? Yeah, he won. I forget. Yeah, so that was a good turnout this year for the tournament. Cactus Jacks is a great facility. It's been around since the 70s. It was sort of a pool hall kind of teen hangout back in the 70s and the 80s when I was in school. It was the place to cruise to on the weekends, mostly video games and pool, some pinball. The gentleman that owned it had many games en route and stuff, so of course they had pinball machines. It was purchased by a gentleman a few years ago who's a pinball enthusiast. So he sort of dug these pinballs out from the back and slowly but surely they've got, I don't know how many they have on the floor now, 50 maybe? 50 plus, yeah. 50 plus on the floor. New, vintage, lots of DMD games, all the classics, all the big names, all in just fabulous working condition. I mean, we could not ask for a better collection of pinball machines in Oklahoma City than Cactus Jacks has. It's great. All right. I definitely have to go there. All this pinball, some classics. You said they've been around since the 70s. I've been around since the 70s. Sounds good, Jay. Let's talk about Double Danger Pinball because this is something that I've seen and a lot of people listening have seen it. Certainly, whether it's online at DoubleDangerPinball.com or DDPinball.com or at big events like Cactus Jacks, like Replay FX, which is coming up in just a few weeks. But Double Danger had to start somewhere. Where did it all begin? Oh, boy. October of 2015? Is that when it was? That sounds right. Yeah. Actually, was it during a tournament even? It might have been. It was right after a tournament. Right after a tournament. And Robert and I had discussed it prior to that. My background is graphic design and fine art. Robert is an artist as well. He's got computer background. So we sort of, I don't know, we actually met outside of Cactus Jacks right after the tournament. And I said, you know what, let's just do this.

3:19

And we said, yeah. And our first sale was 28 days later online. Is that right? That's correct, yeah. Yeah. So we put it together in a hurry, and we came out swinging. I think we had 24 products maybe to start. Is that right? Yeah. Oh, you're way past that now. My God. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, the polo shirts, the regular shirts, work shirts, hats, patches, hoodies. It's the buttons. I see those buttons everywhere. We have lots of retired products, too, that we don't even carry online. We sell stuff at shows we don't even carry online as well. Yeah, there's always show exclusives. We try for every major show to have a brand-new show exclusive, usually a T-shirt that debuts at each of the bigger shows, too. So those appear online like the week after a major show, usually. So we try to do that for every major show, though, too. Speaking of t that where we all three of us are kind of connected because I sent a note to Robert I been asked a few times at some of these events that I go to whether it hosting a Papa Circuit event or whatever it may be And they'll see me wearing a pinball profile shirt, which I just did a one-off for myself. And they'll say, how do I get one of those? I'm like, let me look into that. I put out a feeler a few months ago and I got a lot of requests. And I thought, well, if there's some interest there, maybe. but I certainly don't know the shirt and sales side of it, but Double Danger does. I know firsthand from that. We do indeed. That's why I contacted you. Hey, do you guys want to do this? And now, thanks to the great work of both you, Jay and Robert, we've got three different pinball profile shirts available. And if you like any podcast, I highly recommend you support them, any podcast, and there are so many great ones out there. We all do this for nothing. We all do this because we like to give back to the community. But it is a lot of time. It's a lot of efforts and whatnot. We appreciate doing it. We appreciate the results. This is kind of a way to maybe not give back, but show your support and pride in some of the shows you like. And I see some of the things you've sold for years for our good friends at Buffalo Pinball. And you've got some unique things, too, coming up at replay. Those guys, Nick and Kevin, are great friends of mine. So you guys have been very kind to help out with Pinball Profile. I appreciate that very much. We're glad we could help out. We're excited about it. Absolutely. So I thought, okay, I probably should step this up. You know, I have that radio background and I do these because it's fun. I like to talk to people. But how do I get these shirts out and about? And thank you very much for helping me with this. But I got to do more than that. We've got to send people to DoubleDangerPinball.com. And I don't know if you know the podcast world, but my good friends at Slam Tilt Podcast and at Head to Head Pinball Podcast, we've all used this kind of podcast garden thing that has collapsed on several of us. I know Jeff Parsons had that problem with the Pinball Players Podcast. So we're all kind of getting our own websites. And ta-da, now with the help of a few good people, I've got pinballprofile.com, which will have a link to Double Danger so that we can get these shirts out. So it's been a little behind the scenes stuff between the three of us and it's finally here and I'm pretty excited about it. So do you guys want to tell them what we've got available? Robert, go.

6:38

We actually have three different designs available and it's been kind of a group effort on deciding on what we were going to do with them. But why don't you tell them, Jeff? Okay. You know, when I got the feedback from some of the people, they said, okay, well, what color is it? What size is it going to be? I'm like, I don't know. I mean, I don't know how that works. You guys have kind of figured that out. I appreciate that. So there'll be a few options as far as certainly colors and size, but there are three different ones. There's one that simply just says pinball profile, the logo, and now the new website. There is another one that is, I've had hundreds and hundreds of people on this show. I think the last time I looked at was over 300 different people have been on. So I thought, boy, you know, one of the guys wrote back to me and said, you know, if you had a pinball profile shirt, I would wear it because I've been on the show. I thought, okay, here's an idea. Why don't I make a pinball profile special guest shirt. I thought that's kind of unique. And I thought, well, what if they haven't been on the show and they like the shirt? I know you're going to support me. I'm going to support you. You get one of those shirts. We're going to put you at the top of the line and you're going to come on this show because I want to find out your pinball story, just like I do everyone else's. So that's something we're going to do with the special guest shirt. And then I had to do one that was just passionate for myself and my nemesis slash best friend. there is going to be a Team Josh pinball profile t-shirt that I know I'm going to wear at replay. And thanks guys for designing that. It was good. But let's talk more about Double Danger. And when you first started out, you talked about your first sale was 28 days after. What was it? That was actually a sticker pack to Don from Pinball Podcast. Wow. The now retired Don. Now Jeff and Jessica look after that. Isn't that funny? When you talk about the graphic design, where are you getting these designs? Are they all coming from you guys? Some are and some aren't. At the beginning, with my background in art, we sort of launched the company on things that I had designed. I actually had already sort of designed some of these things before we started to get going so I kind of had them in my back pocket as we were trying to get this thing started However being artists we know artists We both collect art. We know artists through Facebook and Instagram and personally. So I started contacting other artists. And the best part is we sort of give them, most of these guys are not pinball players. Let's put it that way. I don't know if any of them are, but we give them carte blanche when we sort of hire them. Most of them are very excited to do a design for us. So we've got an artist from all over the country, all over the world at this point to work with us. California, North Carolina, Chicago, Spain. Anyway, so all people that we know of or have met personally and we work with these guys, they're just fantastic because they really get into designing this stuff. Pinball is unique to a lot of these guys that are not into it. And I think they just love the idea of kind of grabbing something they don't know a lot about and exploring that in a design. So we've gotten some, just some fantastic art from some of these artists to use on the shirts. So it's been really exciting working with them to do that. Anything on the site that you see that says artist series is all work that we've done with other artists. But there's so much more. I mean, I look at the art and the unique things. I look at the Day of the Dead double danger skull logo which is one of my favorites that's tim lee he's from north carolina just a just the one of the nicest guys you'd ever meet and he's been a commercial illustrator and fine artist for for years he was actually the first guy we went to because he's a he's a personal friend of both robert and ice so he was he was absolutely at the top of the list when we were thinking about other artists to to go to for for design so what about the jewelry too we have split duties here. I do most of the contacts with artists and Robert does all the business side with all the manufacturing and procuring the products and all that kind of stuff. So enamel pins are a rage right now. People love enamel pins. People are collecting them. Artists are producing them. Galleries are producing them. And so that was sort of a natural. We wanted to add that to the line right away. And Robert did lots of digging, lots and lots of digging and research and we found a good manufacturer and so we added that you know and and i think part of what we do when we get a design or we're initiating a design with an artist is i let them know i mean this is probably going to end up as a patch as a pin as a sticker as a shirt as a hoodie as a as a work shirt because we want to any of the really good designs we want to sort of be able to exploit that in any of the the mediums so you know it's sort of a natural buttons were a natural anyway Right, stickers, all that stuff. And this is all stuff that, you know, we wanted something affordable along with not everyone's going to buy a hoodie at the show. But almost anyone can buy a sticker for $3 or a button pack for $3 or $5, you know. So we wanted something for everyone. And I think pins and buttons, and we call them the smalls, are things that almost anyone can pick up at the show or online. Yeah, we actually, when we decided to do earrings early on, and a lot of people thought we were crazy because there's not a lot of women in pinball at the time. And we held on to a whole bunch of earrings for many, many months. And then all of a sudden, as more women got into pinball, they started disappearing, and we re-ran earrings. We had custom molds made. We've ran those three or four times now. Three times, yeah. Yeah, they really took off after a while. So that was good foresight on Robert's part, I think. Earrings were his idea, and I balked at it a little bit. At the beginning, I'm not going to lie, but that's been a really good product, and people really like it. And that's another thing. I mean, honestly, at shows and stuff, we sell a lot of earrings to guys because they're going to take them home to their wives. So it's been a real fun journey kind of seeing where they go and who's impressed by them and stuff. It's been very fun. Heck, it would make good trophies. And that's another thing that you have as well, too. You've got some unique plaques and trophies as well. We do. We have a set of medals. They're flipper bats. They come in gold silver and bronze with blue ribbons We sell those We done plaques for many tournaments So yeah we look into all the possibilities for providing to the pinball community and certainly plaques and trophies with the way tournaments have boomed and stuff recently seemed like a pretty natural thing for us to get into. Well, the nice thing about you being at shows, and you're going to have a big, big booth at ReplayFX, I know you're going to be there with Dan Burfield, who has been on this program before, too, and Brian Holderman, some great people who do wonderful things with pinball art. But if you pre-order anything from Double Danger, whether it be a Pinball Profile shirt or whatever, do it by a certain date. And I think we talked about July 15th. And you can have free delivery at Pinberg, correct? That's correct. That's big. That's huge. That's big savings. Especially for international purchasers. Yeah, anyone that's traveling to the show can pick their shirt up at the show and take it back with them. So that's going to help a lot. Whether you're going to the show or not, you still cater to the entire world, not just to the U.S., but also Canada, also Europe, Australia, everywhere, correct? That's correct. When did the rest of the world start asking for some of these great things from Double Danger? Did that happen right away? Yeah, we actually launched with international shipping, and Canada has been a big market for us, and Australia has been a big market for us. Yeah, Australia is a huge market, honestly. Western Europe is a big market. Germany, England. Australia may be our biggest and furthest customer. But yeah, we ship all over. And we have a European distributor ship. And it's actually, there's a link on the website for European buyers that they can go to to purchase our product in Europe and save on shipping that way. Sounds like a good idea. So get your orders in to Double Danger or DoubleDangerPinball.com or DDPinball.com and make sure you see them for sure, whether it be Jay and Robert at ReplayFX at Pinberg. And also, I know you're going to be there with your good friends Jack Danger for his Dead Flip meetup as Pinberg kind of kicks off. Yeah, we actually have some special giveaways that are just going to be at that show or at that event. So the people that show up. So make sure you be there. Oh, it's going to be packed for sure. Also, I'm going to be going to the Buffalo Pinball Summer Open, and we talked about Buffalo Pinball before with Nick and Kevin. You're doing some stuff with them for the upcoming show in August. Yeah, we actually, they took a pre-order on their website, and we've produced some shirts, which we'll have available there, and I'm sure there's some extra ones that they'll have. So you can see Kevin or Nick and get those as well. A Little Birdie also told me that you might be at Freeplay Florida in November too, which is a great show. I was there in Orlando last year. Daniel Spohler does a wonderful job. You're going to enjoy it there. I'll tell you that right now. Yeah, we're excited about that. It'll be our first time at that show. And now that I moved down to Southern Florida, it's kind of a home show for me as well. A lot of good pinball players in Southern Florida, Robert. I'm excited. We're excited to bring the product to Southern Florida.