Who says you need five minutes of fame? Sometimes 18 seconds will do.
That’s the length of the video from JoBé Products that recently went viral on Instagram. With no vocals, the video shows the company’s Besk product converting from a portable desk into a backpack.
JoBé has been posting content on Instagram since Jan. 2019. Up until about a month-and-a-half ago founder JoCari Beattie — whose name created the company’s name — told me they had around 700 followers. When I spoke to him on Friday afternoon, they were about to cross the 12,000-follower threshold.
As of a recent date, they had somewhere in the vicinity of 12,600 followers, with the video alone generating 314,000 likes, 290,000 shares and more than 1,200 comments.
So what led to the explosion?
“Probably the trending ASMR sounds,” said Beattie referencing all of the syncopated clicks and zips that are included. “Along with the versatility of the Besk. We had a lot of comments [from people] saying they didn’t really know what it was and then once they saw it start to transform how cool it was to see something that you didn't think was going to happen, happen. And then a lot of people started to share, and sent us plenty of questions.”
ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response, refers to a tingling sensation some people report feeling in response to certain visual or auditory stimuli.
Still, Beattie does not know the exact source of the surge, other than something just clicked, so to speak.
“I think what happened was, I just tried to just start posting more consistently,” he said. “For a month the posts really didn’t do anything. Then like a month later, [that] post just started to gain a lot of traction out of nowhere.”
Next up: Shipping out pre-orders
For Beattie and the rest of the JoBé Products team, the timing could not be better.
JoBé now has close to 300 pre-orders of the signature products — and hopes to start shipping them out next month. Currently, the Besks retail for $189.99 on the company's site.
Beattie said that there had been a hold up in trying to secure a certain type of fabric needed to start mass producing Besks, which will take place in a facility in what was formerly known as The A Shopping Center at the corner Cane Run Road and Algonquin Parkway in West Louisville.
“We wanted to go ahead and get assembly started, so we can start getting these things out,” he said.
It’s been a long time coming, given JoBé officially launched in 2018 by selling T-shirts and other apparel just to generate the capital needed to eventually start manufacturing Besks. He initially came up with the idea as a student at Lake Erie College in 2014.
The holdup was also caused by needing to secure the funding needed to purchase the final type of fabric. Recently, though, Beattie was able to secure $205,000 from a variety of sources.
To date, JoBé has raised somewhere in the vicinity of $360,000, including a $124,000 investment from the Louisville Urban League. Back in the summer of 2020, Beattie launched a Kickstarter campaign with the goal of raising $20,000. He ended up raising a little more than $22,000.
Beattie has been in several Louisville accelerators, including Louisville Triumphant in 2020, run by FISLL (Faith, Integrity, Sacrifice, Leadership and Legacy) and the organization now known as Founder Forward. He also served as a business coach for cohort members of the Russell Tech Business Incubator.
Beattie said his company is always looking for more investors, especially after the social media boom. Before the video went viral, he had a handful of international customers. Now, he has pre-orders from 12 countries at last check.
“We’re realizing we’re gonna have to scale up because with all of the international interest, we’re exploring a couple options of being able to make it cheaper for other countries as well as the U.S,” he said. “And we have to explore actually going out and figuring out how to make that happen, [such as] going and visiting the sites, and potentially having distributors in those countries as well. That’s one of the next-level things that we're working on.”
