For Taylor Sanford, the end of a successful roundnet tournament usually meant dealing with a pile of broken equipment. He was constantly throwing away bin after bin of shattered plastic rims that had snapped during matches, and he realized the equipment available on the market was simply too fragile for the growing sport.
Frustrated by warped nets, rotating rims, and flimsy frames, Sanford decided to engineer a solution himself. Now, he is refining his business strategy and scaling his company, Premier Spike, through the Master of Business Creation (MBC) program at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business.
Premier Spike was born out of necessity in 2022. Sanford saw that top-tier athletes were traveling around the world to compete on equipment that often distorted into ovals, rather than staying true circles. After seeing this, he teamed up with a fellow roundnet enthusiast to completely reimagine the roundnet set. Unlike previous iterations on the market that used a similar design to the well-known brand Spikeball, Premier Spike sets utilize thicker ABS plastic and a unique interlocking rim design that prevents rotation. They also introduced “snap-fit” legs that detach upon impact to prevent breakage if a player falls on the net.
“For someone new to the sport, the easiest and clearest way to say it is we are a higher quality version of a spike ball set,” Sanford said. “We completely redesigned how a set came together.”
The brand gained significant legitimacy when Sanford partnered with Jeff Knurek, who created the original game of spike-ball in 1989. Although Knurek had been separated from the prominent brand for years, he saw Premier Spike as the right vehicle to re-enter the market, with innovations including a new “inventor series” of products. This line features new training innovations, including the “Serving Caddy“, which collects balls during practice, and an airless ball that eliminates the variables of air pressure.
Despite having no prior experience in manufacturing or global logistics, Sanford has grown Premier Spike to over $500,000 in sales. Remarkably, this growth has been driven almost entirely by word-of-mouth and grassroots community support rather than paid advertising. The company has established a massive global footprint, which includes shipping containers to Europe, as well as utilizing a network of players in countries like Canada and the Philippines to help with local distribution.
“The 500,000 dollars in sales that we have are all organic,” Sanford said. “Everything has been grassroots marketing just through the influence I have, the relationships I have built, and then the product speaks for itself.”
Sanford knows the roundnet world inside and out, but he recognized he needed more tools to manage a scaling global company. He joined the MBC program to strengthen his business foundation. The mentorship he received helped him navigate the financial complexities of international business and create a robust model to monitor the health of the business.
“The best thing is that you don’t do it for a grade. The professors aren’t doing it for a grade,” Sanford said regarding the MBC experience. “Everybody just wants our businesses to succeed.”
Looking ahead, Premier Spike is aiming to be the equipment standard for the sport. The company has already been selected for use in national championships across Europe and the US. Cementing their status as the premier choice for competitive play, they have officially secured the bid for the upcoming 2026 World Roundnet Championships.
Learn more about Premier Spike at premierspike.com.
