Almost two years after a couple of Mississippi State students put together a company to market a “lighted ice cube” to serve in drinks, business is already booming or, more appropriately, “glo-ing.”
Since being invited to show off their product — Glo — at a pre-Oscars event in Los Angeles in late February, Columbus native Hagan Walker and his business partner, Kaylie Mitchell of Pascagoula, have seen their start-up company, Vibe, catch fire behind its solitary product.
Glo is a liquid-activated “light show,” about the size of an ice-cube, designed to be added to drinks. Because liquid is needed to complete the electrical circuit that produces the light, when the drink is empty, the light — which cycles through a sequence of nine colors — is extinguished, alerting waits staff for the need of a refill.
“I don’t know if it was a direct result of going out to California, but our sales have increased five times since then,” Walker said. “It’s not anything I expected, and in a good way.”
One of the biggest boosts in exposure came after Walker and Mitchell first launched their product last August when Glo was featured on a Tipsy Bartender segment. Tipsy Bartender is the largest social media gathering of drinking enthusiasts, with strong followings on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. That segment attracted 7 million views.
On Thursday, Glo will be featured on a new segment of Tipsy Bartender and Walker expects an even bigger audience.
“When we did our launch, Tipsy Bartender had 10 million followers,” Walker said. “Now, it’s up to 22 million and we expect 15 million views for our product. It’s really hard to peg what that might mean in orders because of the conversion rates — getting people to watch the video, click the link, visit the website, add to cart, complete checkout. But I’d say with 15 million views, that could translate to as many as 5,000 orders.”
The second appearance on Tipsy Bartender comes fast on the heels of the company landing its first big contract.
The San Jose, California-based club Pikoe, which caters to alcohol-free patrons, offers fruit-infused tea cocktails featuring teas from all of the world.
“We actually have a glass that is shaped like a light bulb,” said club manager Billy Le. “For a while we had been thinking about how cool it would be if we could get the glass to light up like a real light-bulb, so we started looking around. We started researching our options and Glo was, by far, the best product for us. It’s perfect for what we wanted to do.”
Walker said the order came out of the blue.
“They contacted us,” Walker said. “They found us through our social media and after talking to them they liked what they heard. They’re committed to ordering 12,000 units per month for at least six months.”
Suddenly, sales went from about 500 units per month to 13,000 per month. To meet demand, the company — with offices in the Greater Starkville Development Partnership building in downtown Starkville — has hired three new employees.
“It’s going way better than Kaylie and I ever thought it could be,” Walker said.
Walker said the company is going through some redesign of packaging and actively looking for new markets, particularly wholesale markets.
“We’re in quite a few stores around Starkville, but what we’d really like to do is more wholesale, which means getting into the big retailers like Walmart and Target,” Walker said.
Thursday’s Tipsy Bartender featuring Glo can be found by going to Facebook.com/Glodrinks.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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