Post-Gazette From left, Lenny Nemeth, vice president, Mark V. Aletto, CEO, and Rich Mackey, president of Guistarpicks, LLC., which the three founded.

Rich Mackey, lead guitarist for the long-gone Crew Dogs, remembers exactly when he morphed into Rich Mackey, custom guitar pick entrepreneur.

Mr. Mackey, of Moon, was playing Alice Cooper's "Be My Lover," primed to rip a riff during a local club gig. "It was my big moment and the pick dropped out of my hand," he said, recalling how it hit the floor like a beer can flip-top.

		Listen in Staff writer David Guo talks with Rick Mackey of Guistar Picks about his business and products.

"That Alice Cooper moment was about 10 years ago," he recalled, and it provided the catalyst to revisit an idea he had first considered five years earlier: A slip-proof pick for professional guitarists.

"Most of the regular picks don't have a customized grip to them. That's where I came up with the idea of an imprint. It was more of a practical application," Mr. Mackey said. "A better mousetrap is what I felt."

Mr. Mackey has since teamed up with Lenny Nemeth, another Crew Dogs alumnus from Moon, and Mark Aletto, a Moon attorney who has represented Bridgeville's Nick Catanese, a onetime Ozzy Osbourne guitarist now playing with the Black Label Society.

Guistar Picks is the result, a new venture fueled by celebrity-endorsed guitar picks that bear the embossed thumb imprint of musicians such as Alice Cooper, Eddie Money and The Poverty Neck Hillbillies.

A class of Robert Morris University students even helped out this spring, producing a marketing plan that Guistar Picks uses when courting new clients.

Mr. Aletto knew a university business school administrator, who mentioned that a marketing class might help Guistar Picks fine-tune its concept. The class, taught by assistant professor Charles Popovich, works with a local business each term to develop a marketing strategy. Past clients, he said, include the Pittsburgh FBI which wanted to target minority recruitment.

"The idea is to get [students] used to competing," Mr. Popovich said. "It's the capstone for marketing majors to put it all together in the marketing plan.

"How to multi-task and how to work under pressure," he added, "is a huge benefit to a potential employer."

At first, Mr. Popovich, who has run the class for 12 years, had his doubts about the personalized guitar pick venture until he saw how much collectors were paying for used guitar picks on eBay.

"Some of them were going for $100, $175 for Aerosmith's Joe Perry and Eric Clapton," Mr. Popovich said. "Some people can really drop some big coin on it. The demand is there."

Guistar Picks didn't do that well but found plenty of eBay interest between $5 and $20 for its personalized picks -- something like selling Air Jordan sneakers endorsed by Michael Jordan versus selling Air Jordans actually worn by the basketball star.

Clever packaging is essential, Mr. Aletto said, so Guistar Picks has prototypes that use foldout, CD-sized holders that double as display cases.

"We felt it would be good to have a market study, being a small company," Mr. Aletto said. All that was asked of them was about $1,500 to sponsor the class, part of which went for supplies and the rest for awards.

Seniors Tom Taylor and Jim Howard got the nod as the best student team, impressing Guistar Picks with their 15-minute presentation. "They seemed to be a little more in tune with the concept," Mr. Aletto said. "We outlined the parameters and they basically confirmed them.

"Basically," Mr. Aletto said, "these guys got it."

Guistar Picks wants to tap three markets -- retail outlets such as record stores, on-site promotions at rock concerts and packaging add-ons tied to related products such as CDs, the Guitar Hero XBox 360 video game and EMG guitar pickups.

Who knows? One day Alice Cooper's thumbprint-certified pick might double as the flip-top to a can of Monster energy drink.

The idea is closer to reality than one might think, as the Monster display case in Mr. Aletto's office would attest. A promotional agreement of some sort with the Corona, Calif.-based Monster Beverage Co. is near, Mr. Aletto said.

In the meantime, Guistar Picks is hoping to make a big splash this fall, not only with the picks but with related products such as a custom necklace with a guitar-shaped amulet that can hold -- you guessed it -- guitar picks.

"Many celebrity artists use their guitar picks as symbolic calling cards," the owners say on the company Web site, www.guistarpicks.com. "Fascination with this intimate part of a musician's arsenal has inspired popular interest in celebrity guitar pick collecting."