By Donald Wittkowski
It was during a leisurely summer day on the beach last year in Sea Isle City that Kevin Fecher noticed four young guys struggling to carry heavy wooden boards through the sand for a game of cornhole.
Fecher, 57, who has a summer home in Sea Isle, watched them play all day and saw them lug the cornhole boards in the deep sand again after they were done.
At that moment, he thought to himself, “There must be a better way.”
Inspired, he created a lightweight, portable game surface that can attach to any standard reclining beach chair to easily convert it into a cornhole or beer pong game.
Developed by Fecher’s Flippin Party Chair company, the 4-pound piece of plastic simply snaps on a beach chair and you’re ready to play.
The game chair allows you to play cornhole or beer pong at the beach, at a barbecue, in the backyard or at any tailgate venue.
Cornhole, a bean bag tossing game, and beer pong, a drinking game in which players attempt to throw or hit balls into cups of beer, are popular beach games.
Fecher, founder and owner of Flippin Party Chair, is launching a Kickstarter campaign on Tuesday, June 19, to fund the initial production run for his invention. It costs $99 for the cornhole game set and $79 for beer pong. As an incentive for buyers, shipping will be free for first-day orders.
To order or learn more about the product, visit the Kickstarter page at www.tinyurl.com/FPCkickstarterpreview or check out the www.flippinparty.com website.
Fecher showed off the game to people who visited his display area on the Sea Isle City Promenade during the annual Skimmer Festival weekend celebration this past Saturday and Sunday.
“This has been great. We’ve had a lot of people stop by,” he said in an interview Saturday.
Fecher has filed for a utility patent for the game. He went through several designs before developing the prototype.
“I worked tirelessly with my family to ensure that the cornhole board was lightweight, easy to transport, and offered the perfect surface for cornhole enthusiasts,” he said.
Peggy Fecher, his wife of 33 years, said her husband’s knack for inventing things helped him create the game chair.
“It was a good idea,” she said. “He’s always thinking of something.”
The couple’s adult children, Shauna, Michael and Matthew, helped in the development and testing of the designs. They are involved in the Flippin Party Chair company, too.
“My kids were with me,” Fecher said. “They said it’s a great idea.”
Fecher, who lives in Vienna, Va., bought a summer vacation home in Sea Isle in 2011. He was elated that he got the inspiration for the game chair while he was lounging on the beach last summer in Sea Isle.
After the four young guys he was watching set up the heavy cornhole game, Fecher noticed that one of them got off of his reclining beach chair to play.
“It dawned on me then, I could turn that beach chair into a cornhole game,” he recalled.
He followed up by researching the regulation size for cornhole games. Through trial and error, he experimented with about a half-dozen designs before the Flippin Party Chair game was created.
