Slide Hustle

Growing up in Northbrook, Ill., Barry Slotnick ’93, ’00 MBA was friends with speed skaters, so he knew a little something about the fitness benefits of slide boards — smooth, low-friction devices designed to facilitate low-impact lateral movement exercises and mimic speed skating technique.  

At Northwestern, Slotnick was a member of the cycling team and was looking for an indoor activity to maintain his lower body strength during the cold and snowy months. So, in the fall of his senior year, he picked up the materials — plywood, two-by-fours and a laminated shower wall panel — at the Evanston Builders Square and built a slide board in his off-campus apartment.  

Shortly after his graduation in 1993, Slotnick got a call from Paul Torricelli, the Northwestern men’s tennis coach at the time, who asked if he could make a slide board for the tennis team. “A day or two later, I received another inquiry,” Slotnick says. “At that point I thought, ‘Well, maybe this is something.’” 

Slotnick officially launched UltraSlide in December 1993. Early customers included the Chicago Bulls — thanks to a cold call — and the New York Knicks. The Bulls wanted an octagonal board for multidirectional training.  

“I had no concept of how to do that, but I wasn’t going to tell the Bulls no,” says Slotnick, who studied political science — not engineering — at Northwestern. “So, in my parents’ garage, a carpenter friend and I created an octagonal slide board. It looked like a giant stop sign.”  

Slotnick worked for much of his career with his family’s tour and travel business, Educational Tours, which specialized in junior high school excursions to the nation’s capital. “The UltraSlide business through those years was really tiny … a night-and-weekend vocation,” says Slotnick, who retired from the tour company in 2011 after selling it in 2006.  

A four-minute segment on The Biggest Loser in 2010 helped build brand awareness for UltraSlide among home fitness enthusiasts. The UltraSlide team created 18 custom-designed boards for a challenge on the NBC primetime show. “We doubled our sales that year just because of that spot,” says Slotnick.  

Now UltraSlide boards come in a variety of designs and lengths and can be found in Northwestern weight and training rooms — as well as facilities across the NCAA, NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB. “Water polo, cricket, rugby — we’ve intersected with almost every sport imaginable,” Slotnick says.   

Maddie Zimmer, left, and Barry Slotnick. Credit: Tom McGrath ’03

UltraSlide is a full-body functional training tool, says Slotnick. It builds core stability, improves lateral agility, strengthens the lower body and can be used for high-intensity cardio workouts. The UltraSlide board also has many physical rehabilitation applications, says Slotnick.  

Produced solely in the U.S., UltraSlide is headquartered in Northbrook, Ill., with manufacturing and assembly in Waukegan, Ill.  

Slotnick’s son, Ben, is a sophomore engineering major, and Barry’s family members, including his late father, Mitchell Slotnick ’63, ’64 MBA, ’68 PhD, have been devoted Wildcats fans and supporters for years. Barry Slotnick says he is especially proud to have Northwestern athletes training on UltraSlide boards.  

Field hockey star Maddie Zimmer ’24, ’25 MA is the first Wildcat athlete to partner with UltraSlide on a name, image and likeness licensing deal. “It was important to feature Maddie and highlight female athletes at Northwestern,” says Slotnick, “because our women’s sports have been so incredibly dominant over the past last decade.”