Christine HINZMANN
A little felt puck holds in its many-layered depths a great big dream.
Local inventor Mark Poruchny, sick of getting hit with a hard orange plastic ball during recreational games of floor hockey, decided to soften the odds a bit and invented the Precision Puck.
He recently auditioned for Dragons’ Den when reps came to Prince George last month to check out what the locals had to offer.
This isn’t Poruchny’s first attempt. He made a pitch to Dragon’ ‘Den in 2003 with an earlier model of the puck.
“I failed miserably at that audition,” Poruchny said. “Just like almost every other person there.”
He took all the advice he was offered during his pitch and used it to further develop his product to be market ready.
This time Poruchny, born and raised in Winnipeg, had all the right stuff at the audition and will take his shot to score a sales and marketing strategy with the Dragons in Toronto on Wednesday, May 16, with the show airing at a later date.
“Everyone in front of me at the audition was in there for five to 10 minutes,” Poruchny said. “I was in there for half an hour and when the producer asked me to autograph a puck for her, I knew I had done fairly well. She said I’d hear from them in three to six weeks and I got the call a week later.”
It took years to create the perfect indoor hockey puck that could stand up to the pressure of the robust sport and Poruch- ny is so confident he’s got a winner he put a U.S. patent on both the product and the process by which it is made.
He started creating the specialized puck by sewing