If you’ve ever wondered about the rubber bracelets world No. 1 Rory McIlroy wears on his right wrist, you can stop now. Bob Gotfredson, founder of IonLoop told me:

[quote_box_center]Rory McIlroy wears the Ion Thins. He wears a David Yurman bracelet, and he puts our Thins on either side of it. We don’t have any kind of agreement with Rory, he just likes our product.[/quote_box_center]

It’s a ringing endorsement for the five-year old brand, which Gotfredson—a co-founder of Trion-Z—started with his wife Melissa five years ago out of a desire for a U.S.-based and focused ion technology company.

I spoke with the pair about the company, its products, and what we can expect in the future.

How it started

Bob Gotfredson: We started this company because we’re entrepreneurs, and we wanted a U.S.-owned company.

IonLoop vs. the competitors

BG: The biggest difference is a design philosophy. The Trion-Z product is designed and developed in Osaka for the U.S. market as well as Japan. Our products are designed and developed here in Texas for the U.S. market. The technology is similar, but it just comes down to: It’s got to be fashionable … as well as functional. I think we bring a different fashion viewpoint.

We’ve developed bracelets for Adidas globally, and also TaylorMade and Adams. We do a lot of corporate business, and we have a very active web presence.

Best-selling items

BG: Original IonLoop bracelet: Silicon band with two magnets. It was the original bracelet we started with and it remains very popular. I think our most popular bracelet is the braided black. It’s a silicone bracelet that looks like a braided bracelet, but it has the durability that you can wear it in the water.

Newest items

BG: We have Ion Thins, which are just small, thin negative ion bands with no magnets that you can mix and match. Those come in 14 colors. You can pick out your four favorite colors to match your team or country. They’re very comfortable to wear. People wear them with other bracelets as well.

The biggest step we made outside of the bracelet area was the Ion Time watches, which just have been really well received.

Melissa Gotfredson: They’re silicon with infused tourmaline in the backplate, and we are patent pending on that technology. We’re excited about that. We’re the only ones who have a watch that offers that technology. It’s a unisex watch. It’s very lightweight. And I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface with it.

BG: And it’s fashionable. Comes in five colors. We’ve been advertising on Morning Drive and have had great response on the watch.

This past week we introduced leather bracelets, which have negative ions and a magnet clasp. The negative ions … are infused in the band. It’s an eight-strand leather design. Most leather bracelets in the market place are four-strand. And they’re thicker and kind of bulky. This is a fine gauge bracelet that looks like it might cost $200. We retail them for $45. Again, a fashion element using our technology.

Negative ion technology

BG: Negative ions are found in nature as well as positive ions. Positive ions are the bad ions, so it’s counter-intuitive. Positive ions come from the sun in the form of UV rays and they fatigue your body.

A number of years ago in Japan, golfers found that if they wore negative ion bracelets …they would have more energy and focus as they turned the back nine after being out in the sun all day. So they became popular in that marketplace and transitioned over to the rest of the world.

What’s also interesting is that negative ions counteract the effects of positive ions that come out of your computer screen. If you’re in front of a computer screen, you’re getting bombarded … sitting in front of that thing all day just fatigues the hell out of you.

Hewlett-Packard, in England, is doing a great deal of research into trying to find a way to block the positive ions from these computer screens. They haven’t come up with it yet, and until they do, everybody at a computer should have something on that produces negative ions. Cell phones, computers, anything electronic is giving off positive ions.

Why not?

BG: Really, when you think about it, for $20 or $45 on the leather bracelet, they look good anyway. Hundreds of millions of people wear bracelets. The bracelet business in the U.S. is estimated to be $400 million a year.

So, there are a lot of bracelets out there…the ones that have technology, why not try them? It’s a small investment and it might be helpful. They really don’t wear out either. The magnets don’t wear out. We’re coming on six years here and the original bracelets are still running at about 90 percent output.

On Tour

BG: We do not have endorsement deals with any players on the PGA Tour because they like to wear our bracelets anyway. The TaylorMade bracelets are in the tour trailer every week.

Zach Johnson, we were involved with him and his charity, so he wears our bracelets from time to time. Ryan Palmer wears them every week. Butch Harmon, we sent him some of our leather bracelets and he loved them. Lexi Thompson loves the bracelets.

We do them for the U.S. Open every year and they go in the players’ bags and the wives’ gift bags. We do them at the PGA Championship as well.

What’s next

BG: From a bracelet standpoint, we’re going to continue to innovate and come up with new and unique products similar to the leather bracelet. We’re going to have some more watch offerings coming out in 2015.

We’re always developing new products. There’s three or four new bracelets that are in the works. We’re constantly looking to innovate.

You can check out IonLoop’s website here.