For Eric Thrall, Buddha means business.

Buddha Boards, that is – and business is booming. Buddha Board Inc., the company founded by the former Lethbridge-area entrepreneur, produces a line of products that encourages users to “live in the present” by providing an artistic outlet that lasts but a few moments before fading into memory.

“I started the company about 21/2 years ago when I was able to put together the first prototype,” Thrall says.

He credits his mother with introducing him to the medium he uses to create the special drawing surface on the board. Thrall’s mother is an artist who came across the material in the course of her work and passed it on to her son.

Karen Dyer, Business Edge
Eric Thrall says his artistic boards simply “sell themselves.”

“It’s a bit of a secret technology,” he laughs, “but I need to keep it that way to protect the product.”

And the Buddha Boards are a product worth protecting. In the less than three years since Thrall produced his prototype, Buddha Board Inc. has gone from distribution through a single sales outlet at the Vancouver Art Gallery store to availability in more than 600 locations around the world.

“I get to know clients through trade shows, mostly,” in places like New York, Dallas, Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton, Thrall says. “Every show, I seem to pick up between 30 to 50 new clients.”

Even with numbers like that, Thrall makes no claim to be a sales wizard or even a Buddhist, for that matter, despite having moved to the West Coast.

“I get asked that all the time,” he admits. “But even though I’m not a practising Buddhist, I love the concepts and ideas behind Buddhism. I love the Zen idea of living in the moment and I don’t think you necessarily have to be a Buddhist to appreciate the concept.”

As to his skill at closing a sale, Thrall denies any special help from the Big Guy.

“I’m not a salesman. I just set up the boards and they sell themselves.”

For anyone with a yen for Zen, the Buddha Board is a perfect medium. The board is placed on a small stand that doubles as a water vessel and includes a Japanese-style paintbrush. The user paints an image on the special surface of the board, which initially darkens like jet-black ink and then gradually fades away.

According to Thrall, the original Buddha Board is just the beginning. He has hired a production manager (originally from Coquitlam, B.C.) who is now living in China, and Thrall has moved production from Canada to Asia in order to keep pace with demand for the product.

The company now also produces a laptop colour version of the original, which folds open with the lid acting as an easel to support the board, water tray and brush.

Next into production will be small gift-card versions of the product, complete with a selection of stickers and space to personalize the desk calendar-sized board.

“I also have a kids’ version that’s coming out soon,” says Thrall. “The Water Wizard is based on the laptop Buddha Board design, but a bit more colourful and less expensive.”

Thrall says he finds it hard to think of himself as just a businessman. “I like to think of it as a cross between business and art,” he muses.

After growing up on his family’s ranch in southern Alberta, Thrall originally left home to investigate selling trips to the region to eco-tourists in Japan.

When the bottom fell out of the economy in that country, he returned to study marketing, photography and design at schools in the U.S., Concordia and McGill in Montreal and finally at Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver.

His unique experience within the business and art communities ultimately led to his Nirvana, and the Buddha Board was born.

The products are available for sale through Thrall’s website, but trade and toy shows remain his bread and buddha. He has been approached by a number of companies, including Crayola, to produce private-label versions of the boards, but so far he has been determined to keep control of this speedily growing business.

“I am hoping the Water Wizard will be available as a mass-market product,” he says. “I’ve been talking with distributors in Japan, New Zealand and Australia.

“I also did the Nuremberg Toy Show this year in Germany, so the product is now starting to be available in Europe. I just want to get it out there.”

His intent is to keep the retail costs under $20 Cdn, about half the cost of an original Buddha Board.

Thrall doesn’t struggle at all when asked how he feels about the tremendous success of his company.

“I remember seeing a commercial – I think it was a UPS commercial, and it was this guy who designed this red chair. And the next thing you know, the chair is all over the world. One of the greatest things about the Internet and about business today is that you can just do that.”

(Karen Dyer can be reached at karen@businessedge.ca)