By all accounts, James Ignatowich is the first established UPA pro to launch a paddle brand from the ground up.

His metamorphosis from hard-hitting pro to materials science-loving nerd is a curious one. As he explains it in this week's PicklePod with Zane Navratil , he's been frustrated in the past with his own equipment and endeavored to learn all he could about what makes a paddle great.

After obsessing for six hours or more every day for about a year now — and dissecting, by hand, nearly every paddle on the market — he started tinkering with his own designs.

Forty prototypes later he arrived at his new brand, RPM .

"It became my passion," he told Zane. "I can tell you everything about any paddle."

Ignatowich was a sponsored pro with Selkirk for three years, and in a lot of ways the pro face of the brand. He's got nothing but love for that experience, but also knew when it was time to move on.

"I was always wondering how you make a better paddle," he said. "I wasn't really trying to make a company in the beginning."

RPM’s signature paddle line, the Friction Pro Series , is already USAP certified and slated to officially launch to the public toward the end of the month. James is expecting UPA-A certification soon as well, though the paddles will be "blacked out" through the end of the year.

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