Hi, I’m Arthur, and I’m a table tennis fanatic and entrepreneur.
I played casually as a younster but I really got serious in my university days at Ryerson when I did my co-op at the IBM Toronto Lab, where they had two ping pong tables and tons of players to play with at lunch time! I organized the office tournaments and started getting coaching and have since competed in tournaments across Canada and the US, including the US Open and Joola Teams Events.
My First Business
I started my first business (PPGEAR) during university selling ping pong t-shirts online, but I soon started selling rackets to the other students I’d meet at the one ping pong table at the Ryerson Athletic Centre. As a Computer Science student, I built my own online shop, and as business kept growing, my parents’ attic soon became storage for inventory!
I enjoyed growing the shop and learned so much about business, and it made me want to return to school to get my MBA at Queen’s University, so I sold my business as I couldn’t juggle both without compromising serving customers well.
The Birth of Revspin…
In 2008, I was searching for equipment reviews and stats and couldn’t find a good source for them, so I built the Table Tennis Database (now rebranded as Revspin.net). It took hundreds–maybe thousands–of hours to design and build this platform on my own to collect reviews and aggregate ratings on the speed, spin, control, and various characteristics of blades, rubbers, and all types of equipment. But the labour was all worth it; now it reaches close to a million users each year and over 12-million page views.
Providing Equipment Once Again =)
In 2021, I decided to get back into providing equipment to players so I bought back my PPGEAR business, and rebranded it as Smash Table Tennis. I’m happy to be back helping customers find their perfect racket and striving for a world-class customer experience!
Support Revspin’s Development
When you purchase from Smash, you’re helping to grow my business so I can do further development of the Revspin platform. When I started Revspin and PPGEAR, I never thought they could be my full-time livelihood. However as Smash Table Tennis Shop and Revspin are growing, it’s becoming more and more of a reality. I’ve already scaled down my day job to 3 days a week, so I can devote 2 days a week to developing Revspin.
Some upcoming features on the backlog are:
- Better filters for finding your ideal equipment, with detailed control of each characteristic
- A more accurate algorithm for user ratings to put less weight on extreme ratings and boost higher quality ratings
Once I’m able to go full-time into Revspin, it will unlock a lot of potential for innovation and improvement so I can make the best platform for insights on table tennis equipment.
Connect with Me
Feel free to connect on Facebook and Instagram!
Why buy from Smash?
