Phoam Labs has relaunched from its previous branding of BKB Floral Foam Inc. and it's gearing up to hit the market.
The Eden Prairie-based business has run its manufacturing trials and hopes to pull the trigger in the coming months to begin producing its biodegradable foam at-scale, with potential to create 100,000 bricks per month once it’s up and running. The team is already working out partnerships with manufacturers in Europe and on the east coast of the U.S. with hopes to launch around the same time in both markets.
Phoam Labs is currently trying to work out deals in hopes of getting the product to market by the end of this year or early next year. “We’ve been forging relationships with [floral] distributors across the U.S. and Europe that would be selling our product to their consumers,” said Chief Technology Officer and co-inventor David Goldfeld.
It started as a project at the University of Minnesota in 2016 and the team filed for patents and published an academic paper in 2018. Some momentum built until the pandemic stalled research funding. The team was thrown back to square one for its effort to commercializing.
At the beginning of last year, the team established a full-scale startup company. By September, it was crowned the grand prize winner in the Minnesota Cup.
“Suddenly we were all over the news and a lot of people heard about us and things escalated very, very quickly,” Goldfeld said. While riding that wave, the team started a fundraising round in December and pulled in $3 million mostly from independent investors. That closed in March with no money from venture capital or large investment firms, Goldfeld said.
The foam is a replacement for petroleum-based floral foam, which breaks down into microplastics and never fully degrades. Considering itself a research and development company, the team is already looking at uses for the foam beyond the floral industry and hoping to raise more funds to support that research.
Goldfeld was the only full-time employee at the beginning of last year. Now the team is comprised of seven people, which includes Sam Waring, Phoam Labs’ chief financial officer that moved from his job in the investment banking industry to join the team.
Waring said the team is working on the various bio-based certifications, and test results have so far come back well. They’re getting “flooded” with inquiries from people interested in buying the product, and Phoam Labs is now just working to get the foam out the door.
“There are a lot of people who doubted this could be done at all,” Waring said. “Saying that we are able to manufacture it at-scale, that’s probably the most important thing. And it’s turned a lot of people into believers.”
