his company would sell in more than 5,500 stores and be exported to more than 70 countries of the world. "Slinkys" With the guitar-based rock revival of the 1960s, Ball noticed that beginner students were having difficulty playing the bestselling Fender #10 medium gauge strings, particularly in holding down or bending the stiff .028" third ("G") string. At the time, it was common for a set of strings to have a third string that was "wound". He approached the Fender company with the problem, suggesting a lighter gauge, but was rebuffed. Ball convinced a string manufacturer to make him custom sets with a 24-gauge third string which he sold in his store. It was the beginning of the Ernie Ball brand. Located not far from Hollywood, the store began to attract a large patronage of professional musicians, including The Beach Boys, Merle Travis, and The Ventures. Ball also began to notice the practice of "slack stringing" among players who discarded the bottom sixth string and added a banjo first string on top. This resulted in an overall lighter gauge set with a plain third string. Again, he contacted Fender with a suggestion for a lighter set and was turned down. He then approached Gibson, who also turned him down. So, once again he ordered from the manufacturer naming the product the Ernie Ball Slinky. "Slinky" strings traveled the country with the pro musicians who used them and before long, Ball was receiving mail orders from individuals and stores. Still not a string company, he ordered separate strings in various sizes and displayed them in a makeshift case allowing musicians to experiment in creating their own sets. It took off, and in 1967 he sold the store and moved his string business to Newport Beach, California. Today Ernie Ball Slinkys are used by many world-famous guitar players, including Jimmy Page, Paul McCartney, Angus Young, Keith Richards, and Joe Bonamassa. The characteristic packaging of Ball's guitar strings was designed by Rolly Crump, a Disney Imagineer. Marketing innovation Ernie Ball did not create anything new — he saw a demand and improved upon existing products and found ways to better fulfill market demands. By the early 1970s he took the company global by establishing distributors in Europe and Asia. Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, and other rock icons began to make use of Slinkys, a trend that continues into the present, making