By Frank Daniels IV
Insider Staff Writer
Within earshot of most parks these days, you can hear the thwack-crack of pickleball volleys echoing from its courts. In November, two local couples took their love of the game and played a new hand.
Following an off-handed idea for a birthday party in 2023, Jennifer and David Furie and Penny and Alan Terry have served up a playing card-based challenge game called Pickleball Shuffle.
It appears to be a deck of cards like any other, though graced with a pickleball-playing pickle character. Once a player opens the box, they’ll find two decks of 24 cards sporting challenges like “Make the opposition play a point with only 1 player” and “Player may serve to either opponent.”
They included two sets to accommodate a larger group or party playing two courts simultaneously, like they commonly do for their regular group of four couples.
“If pickleball got rained out, we’d go to someone’s house and play games,” said Jenn Furie. “It was actually Penny’s idea. Three of us have a birthday within a week of each other, so we said, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if we came up with a fun way to combine a game with pickleball?’ Some way to make it more gamified than a standard game of pickleball.”
Penny Terry went to the UPS store in Pinecrest Plaza to print something that felt a little more substantial for that birthday party.
“They needed to be high-quality, thick cards,” she said. “It was kind of an experiment.”
“And it was just a huge success,” added Furie. “Lots of laughs. They loved it, so maybe a month later, we did it again. Then we thought, “Let’s see if other people like this.’”
After trials with other players and positive feedback, they realized they could be on to something. Searching for a similar game revealed nothing, so that’s when a fun game of pickleball, played for a gallon of Mount Olive pickles, became an opportunity.
“We thought, ‘Let’s go for it,’” said Terry. “Plus we’re good friends. We said, ‘OK, it’s going to be an adventure.’ So that was how we looked at it — and this has been an adventure.”
“As we went through this process, it ended up being a lot more decisions and a lot more work than we thought,” said Furie.
Terry’s niece and her husband, Whittney and Sho Rust, ran an AI-based brand development platform, so she reached out to them, thinking that the game idea needed a face. A face on a pickle.
“The first thing we did was try to find the logo,” said Terry. “We all liked having something that was kind of fun looking, a little bit whimsical and that kind of reflected the game — the party atmosphere and fun atmosphere.”
Concurrent with logo design and branding, the group recognized the need to refine the copy and simplify the challenges on each card so that they were easy to understand and perform, and that it would work as a marketable card game.
“At some point in the summer, maybe even April, we had to start editing and coming up with enough cards,” said Furie. “You’ve got to have enough cards to make a deck. We tightened the language, and then you need an instruction manual.”
They never expected to start an operation, so the endeavor didn’t begin with a business plan, defined responsibilities or titles leading to a marketing and growth strategy. As they established a more structured process deeper into the production, each member of the group found the place where they wanted to contribute.
“Everybody just naturally fell into a role,” said Furie.
Alan Terry settled into a financial role, keeping track of expenditures and offering the practical perspective as one step led to the next. David Furie has primarily operated as the research arm of the operation. He was the one who compared the merits of a flip-top metal tin to a cardboard tuck-box and the varied existing games on the market. Jennifer Furie has adopted the role of marketing manager, and Penny Terry jumped into retailing for the product.
As the foursome approached launch day, their model began to reflect more normal business operations. They worked to market their decks through business-to-business retailing relationships.
“We first went to the local merchants, because we feel very strongly about supporting the local merchants,” said Terry.
That highlighted two possible options for B2B sales: retail stores like The Country Bookshop and One Eleven Main, or pickleball-focused sporting spaces like the CCNC Tennis Shop and The Pickle Place indoor pickleball facility. After approaching those organizations, a question from one of the business owners prompted them to examine if they wanted to be wholesalers or retailers. They decided that, while they wanted to continue the B2B route, to prevent this adventure becoming an around-the-clock sojourn they would need a more automated direct-to-consumer avenue and felt the obvious choice was Amazon Marketplace.
“The group said, ‘Well, Amazon’s easy,’” said Furie. “Although it has not been that easy.”
“You have some instant exposure,” said Terry. “But it was a little bit difficult navigating the back end and doing product listing. They have their own terminology. This was a lot more work than we anticipated, but I’m really glad to have done it. I’ve learned how to use Open AI. I’ve grown a lot in this and actually it’s an accomplishment, whether we sell hundreds and hundreds or 10,000.”
The flip-side of that effort is in Furie’s court. She has undertaken the marketing efforts.
“I have a long way to go,” she said. “Just because you put it on Amazon, doesn’t mean anybody knows it’s there. So I’m trying to do the social media piece. We’ve created an Instagram page for Pickleball Shuffle.
“I’ve been trying to tell myself, ‘Have a growth mindset as we’re getting older, right? This is a learning opportunity.’ I have people that can help me learn it, so I am already learning a little bit about how to make a reel on Instagram and story and different posts, but you have to keep up with it.”
Furie is contemplating and researching the feasibility of partnering with social media influencers and more traditional event-based marketing, where a mascot of their paddle-toting pickle logo interacts with the public at exhibition matches around the country. That model already displayed its effectiveness during a recent celebrity appearance in Pinehurst.
“We were surprised that it debuted at a pro exhibition at CCNC with Tyler Hansbrough and three other pickleball pros,” said Terry.
“They announced that we made the game,” said Furie. “And I remember a woman sitting right behind us tapping on the shoulder asking, “Will that be ready before Christmas?’”
Furie and the group are collectively trying to move other marketing efforts forward. They managed to secure pickleballshuffle.com for their website URL, and have hopes that they can turn some marketing trips into real adventures and vacations. They anticipate an initial surge in demand for the Christmas holiday season.
“Everybody knows someone in their life that plays pickleball,” said Furie. “Somebody, if they don’t play it themselves. It’s a great gift for that pickleball person in your life.”
At 223.5 percent growth over the past three years, pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the U.S., resulting in an estimated 48.3 million players in America, according to the Association of Pickleball Professionals.
The Furies and the Terrys plan to shuffle into the lexicon. Those millions of players could be singing along after playing one of the Pickleball Shuffle challenge cards that echoes the origins of their new game: “Opponents must sing ‘Happy Birthday’ throughout the entire point.”
Contact Frank Daniels IV at (910) 693-2486 or frank@thepilot.com.
