Inside Selkirk's high-tech pickleball lab, where they use a 'performance cannon' and 'Thor's hammer' to make top-of-the-line paddles

"Selkirk isn't just producing pickleball paddles. They're running science experiments. One such experiment involves firing pickleballs at a stationary paddle at up to 120 miles per hour - over and over and over again. When the ball leaves the "durability cannon," which the engineers nicknamed Mjölnir after Thor's hammer, and makes contact with the paddle, it emits a booming sound that resembles, well, a cannon. Impressive for a perforated plastic sphere."

"Thor's hammer is just one of the fancy and expensive pieces of machinery I got to see in action when I toured Selkirk LABS, the research and development division of Selkirk Sport, in mid-January. Selkirk is a leading pickleball equipment brand. If you play the sport, chances are you or your opponent is wielding one of their sticks. The shipping department manager, who works out of the company's 87,000-square-foot warehouse, told me they fulfill roughly 1,000 orders a day and up to 2,500"

"The company was founded in 2014 by two brothers, Rob and Mike Barnes, and their father, Jim, well before pickleball became popular. "Pickleball had a connotation of being a senior sport for a while," Rob told me at the Selkirk headquarters in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where the brothers grew up and started their first business as teens selling airsoft guns out of their dad's basement. They sold the airsoft business to pivot to pickleball, a game they discovered in 2009 and couldn't get enough of."

Selkirk manufactures pickleball paddles and operates a private sports science lab that performs rigorous equipment testing. Engineers use a durability cannon nicknamed Mjölnir to fire pickleballs at stationary paddles at speeds up to 120 miles per hour to evaluate impact and longevity. The company invested roughly $1 million in Selkirk LABS to support research and development. Founded in 2014 by brothers Rob and Mike Barnes and their father Jim after pivoting from an airsoft business, Selkirk now runs an 87,000-square-foot warehouse fulfilling about 1,000 orders daily and up to 2,500 during peak season.

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