The Idea
Somewhere on the highway between Cincinnati and Toronto in 2024, Brad Robins was holding a bag of ice against a rapidly closing eye. He had just taken a pickleball to the face in a 50-and-over doubles draw. Robins was two years into retirement after four decades in advertising, a career that included bringing Apple and Facebook to Canada and running his own sports agency. He had no interest in starting anything. The plan was grandkids.
He and his partner Dave Katz spent the drive circling the same observation. Pickleball had gone mainstream precisely because it let anyone play, which also meant courts full of people with wildly uneven reflexes swinging at a hard plastic ball from close range. The sport had paddles, balls, shoes, apparel and rating systems. What it did not have was eye protection anyone actually wanted to wear. Fewer than 15% of players worldwide were wearing any, and more than 1,200 pickleball eye injuries were reported in the US in 2024 alone.
Two men in their sixties, one ice pack, one obvious gap. This was the beginning of Kitchen Blockers.
The Execution
- 2024: Robins, retired after 40 years in advertising, gets hit in the eye at a PPA event in Cincinnati. He and Katz sketch out the business on the drive back to Ontario, betting that the reason nobody wears eye protection is that all the existing options are bad.
- Late 2024: They recruit a family friend who had been chief engineer at a NATO-based company making military eyewear for snipers and artillery crews. After multiple CAD iterations they commit to the counterintuitive answer: strip out the lens entirely and shape the frame so it stops the ball before it reaches the eye. No lens, no fog, no glare, no distortion.
- March 2025: The product is finished after roughly a year of impact work. High-impact frame material, neoprene padding, patent-pending deflection geometry, and independent testing up to 60 mph at a military facility.
- 2025: Self-funded launch, no outside capital and no sales team. They sell to players at their own club first, then run Facebook ads in Canada as a cheap test market, holding back the US until the numbers justified it.
- November 2025: USA Pickleball signs them as Official Lensless Eyewear Partner on a three-year deal, with presenting rights on the medal stand at Nationals and every Golden Ticket Tournament. Every gold medallist walks off with a special edition pair.
- January 2026: DUPR, the global rating system used across leagues, tours and federations, names them its official lensless eyewear partner. The Junior PPA signs too, opening up kids' sizing.
- February to March 2026: They ship SlimFit, a narrower frame built after feedback that the original was too wide for many faces, particularly women. CityPickle then makes them an official retail partner, stocking the eyewear in its Times Square club.
- Today: $3.5 million in annual revenue, growing 300% year on year, shipping to 50-plus countries, with more than 50,000 players now owning a pair. Investors keep calling. Robins, now 66, keeps saying the same thing: "We're not looking for money." He wants distribution partners, not a cap table.
The lesson?
Robins never went hunting for a wedge. He got hit in the face, worked out that the reason nobody wore eye protection was that every existing version was uncomfortable to wear, and then spent a full year with a military eyewear engineer before he sold a single pair. Forty years in advertising taught him how to tell the story. The bruise told him what the story was. Two retired guys with no ops team, no funding and no sales calls just built a multimillion-dollar category out of a bad afternoon on court. The best product research is the kind that leaves a mark.