What started out as a hobby for Brian Halasinski is now a promising business, Smoke Staxx Pans LLC in Canton.Last summer, Halasinski started using a round smoker, and he had trouble finding a good, round barbecue pan to go along with it. He began brainstorming with his friend, Kirk Hyust, and in December, the two came up with the idea for a stackable pan. In early May, Smoke Staxx Pans went live on Kickstarter. It reached its goal of $15,000 within eight days, Halasinski said, ultimately raising $17,706. Halasinski said that he and Hyust have been busy in recent months, filing for a patent, forming an LLC, registering with the state and setting up an online presence for Smoke Staxx Pans. Halasinski is president of the company, and Hyust is vice president.The way the pans are designed allows smoke and air to flow throughout, even when they're stacked on top of each other. That will let customers stack the pans and cook multiple items without cross contamination, Halasinski said.Hyust said the pan needed to have structure and be able to do something typical pans can't; they couldn't just patent a regular aluminum pan. Hyust has patented a wrench, so he has experience with the process. The business partners met about two-and-a-half years ago when Halasinski hired Hyust for a renovation project. The job ended up being eight months long, and the two became friends in that time. And on this particular venture, their experiences aligned well. Both Halasinski and Hyust have entrepreneurial experience: Halasinski is a pharmaceutical sales representative who ran a head lice treatment center that he recently sold, and Hyust has his own construction company. Before getting into construction, Hyust attended culinary school and worked in the restaurant industry. "It's a perfect combination," Hyust said.The two originally planned to make a disposable aluminum pan, but they found quotes from U.S. and Canadian tool and die makers to be prohibitively expensive. They started looking to Chinese manufacturers, but really wanted to make the product in the United States, preferably in Northeast Ohio, Halasinski said. After a little more searching, the pair came across an Amish manufacturer in Millersburg who said the pans could be made in cast aluminum. That would make the pan reusable, but more expensive for consumers. The original idea of making disposable pans was to make it affordable, Halasinski said. The cast aluminum pans cost about $100 each.But the tooling for a cast aluminum pan would be less expensive for Smoke Staxx Pans, as they wouldn't need to make as much, and that would let the company go to market faster.They decided to make the change."We didn't really have much choice," Halasinski said.From there, Halasinski and Hyust put together an entire supply chain in Northeast Ohio, lining up a company in Southington to make the tooling, one in Medina to do the surface finishing on the pans and another in Macedonia for the packaging. "That's really what we wanted to do in the first place," Hyust said.The region's long been a hub for manufacturing, Hyust said, and he and Halasinski wanted to try to contribute to the local economy.The company plans to sell the pans online. It also has about five retail stores in the area already committed to carrying the product, Halasinski said.Custom Fireplace Shop in North Canton is one of those locations. Manager Jeff Dick said the store has already placed an order with Smoke Staxx Pans. The store carries a lot of barbecue grills, and the pans stand out because they'll let customers increase their cooking surface in a small amount of space, he said.Lehman's in Kidron, Ohio, is another store that will carry the product. It was started as a hardware store for the Amish population in the area and has grown to become a more general, non-electric goods retailer, said sales manager Steve Henry. The store sells a lot of barbecue and cast iron products, and the locally made cast aluminum pans will be a natural fit, he said.Halasinski said he expected production to begin in mid-July and delivery to Kickstarter backers to begin in early August.