Innovative Monticello graduate a cut above with new product - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette

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On a fishing trip in 2018 with his father, Tyler Jones watched in amazement as Dad used a boulder to clean fish for their evening meal.

“If we wanted dinner, he had to filet a fish,” said Jones, a 2016 Monticello High School graduate. “Obviously it was kind of an unfavorable surface and inefficient. I was holding the canoe so it didn’t fly down the river, and I watched him filet from a distance. It was kind of funny.”

He knew there had to be a better way and on the spot came up with the makings of a portable, durable cutting surface.

“Yeah, that would have been useful,” his dad, Todd Jones, told him.

The idea blossomed into SLAB Outdoors, a company that makes the SLAB 1.0, a textured surface made of dense plastic (HDPE, High-Density Polyethylene). It measures 12 by 12 inches and 1 inch thick when folded, and 24 x 12 x ½ inch when expanded. There is also a built-in ruler to measure a catch.

“The goal is for it to be the last cutting surface you will ever buy,” said Jones, backing that up with an experiment where he threw it off a balcony onto a concrete sidewalk and saw it survive.

The SLAB 1.0 is available on his website, slaboutdoors.com, and also at gear.com, Chimney Trail and Overland Bound. He also sells T-shirts and caps with the company logo, as well as a “buddy mug” that has a clip on it so that it stays with the user. It fits into the company motto, “Take it With You.” He also hopes the startup leads to other outdoor supplies from his company in the future.

The new venture was also something Jones could concentrate on during the 2020 quarantine. He earned his bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship and small-business management from North Central College in Naperville in May and is pursuing his MBA in a one-year course.

While at North Central, he has pitched for the baseball team, becoming a middle- to late-inning reliever last season who posted a 1.33 ERA, struck out 24 hitters in 27 innings pitched and saved 5 games. He was named to the all-academic team for the CCIW (College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin).

He has long had an entrepreneurial spirit. In 2018 he gave a TEDx talk, focusing on a scholarship fundraiser he started for Andrew Bryant, a friend who died due to complications from Muscular Dystrophy in 2011.

While studying for his MBA, he is also doing freelance work for other companies, writing business plans and strategies.

No matter how busy he gets, he continues to be drawn to such endeavors.

“I always tell people it’s a bit of a curse. It’s not all fun and games, but I love writing a business plan for someone, giving them a springboard. With the whole SLAB process, I built the website, I work with online retail connections. You kind of have to be a jack-of-all-trades,” said Jones.

But he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“It’s a huge challenge, but it’s kind of a puzzle. It’s fun to figure out,” he said.

And his latest one is especially precious, because it was launched with that cherished trip with his father.

“The whole story is rooted in family, and that is an incredibly important aspect of my life,” he said.

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Innovative Monticello graduate a cut above with new product - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette
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