Gabriel Gaviña (Buenos Aires, 56 years old) is a garage entrepreneur. Literally. In the garage of his house in Boscos de Tarragona he has developed and fine-tuned the Ball Rescuer, the invention with which he and his partner José Docavo, who lives in Madrid, plan to revolutionize the world of tennis and paddle balls.
The Ball Rescuer, as its name suggests, is a ball retriever. A gadget that allows the useful life of a tennis ball to be extended beyond the two games that, in the non-professional world, usually last on average. Paddle tennis teacher for many years and with extensive experience in tennis clubs, Gabriel Gaviña says that it hurt him "to see the waste that is made with tennis balls."
What the Ball Rescuer does is retrieve that lost boat. That is to say, the air that begins to escape from the moment the container with the recently bought balls is opened for the first time, and that after a few sessions of serves and returns end up inert without rising more than a couple of feet from the I usually.
The invention developed by Gabriel Gaviña is not the first to come onto the market for this purpose, although it is distinguished by a one hundred percent focus on sustainability. Unlike others, its pressure recuperator is compact and adapts -with a thread system- to any of the tube formats of the three main manufacturers of tennis and paddle balls in the world.
In addition, 35% of its profits are used to support a recycling company that is responsible for transforming a portion of those 10 million tennis and paddle balls that are thrown into the garden every year. rubbish in Spain because they have lost their ability to throw it away.
"Our idea is that the balls die by peeling, because with use they have lost their coverage, but not because they have lost their ability to bounce"
By means of a manual pump -such as those used to inflate bicycle wheels- and a regulator incorporated in the Ball Rescuer, pressure is added inside these tubes, allowing the balls stored in them to recover that air lost with use. .
Gabriel Gaviña says that, with his invention, from an average of two games, a set of three tennis balls can extend its life to a minimum of twenty games, and even thirty, for an average user. At five euros a tube of three balls, "whoever does not have this and plays regularly -defends Gaviña-, is throwing money away".
Gabriel Gaviña and his partner have already invested around 40,000 euros in the development of the Ball Rescuer, with which he began testing in his garage a year ago, and which they have been selling on the Internet for just over a month, especially on Amazon, after registering the patent.
They have sold about 400 kits -which they manufacture in Alacant-, at 29.90 euros with postage included to any point in Spain (24.90 euros if the stain is not included). But they want to bounce much further. Soon they plan to start selling their product in France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy, always online, to reach 10,000 units sold in a year.