P4
April 2012
With an assist from
GCU, sports-fan
product poised
to go big soon
This
is just what the American marketplace needs, right? Another
item of sports memorabilia, to add to the foam fingers and
bobbleheads already out there.
Actually, there
is
room for one more. That’s because the Fan Post has a number of
things going for it, including a GCU connection.
It’s a head-turning conversation piece for office or home. It’s fully customizable.
It’s interactive. It’s retro cool. And, at first sight, it prompts this kind of reaction, a
roundabout compliment if there ever was one: “Why didn’t I think of that?”
The Fan Post had its start a few years ago when
Ken Sandy
of Mesa was involved
in a finger-football league at his office and built a trophy for the winning team: a
miniature goalpost made of PVC pipe and accented with a tiny collision bumper,
resembling the on-the-field kind.
It wasn’t long before everyone wanted one, and Sandy realized he had stumbled
onto something big.
Chris Kirk
, an enrollment counselor at GCU, came on board
to help with the product’s development, and soon
Brandon Hesterman
and
Denis Castro
also joined the team as the Fan Post expanded to producing mini
basketball hoops and then baseball, hockey and soccer pieces.
A Denver-based merchandiser, which contracts with eight professional sports
teams, likes what it sees in the product. The NCAA is in the process of reviewing the
fledgling company’s application for official licensing. And, through an intermediary,
the NFL is taking a look.
The product also has caught the attention of Assistant Professor
Tim Kelley
of
GCU’s Ken Blanchard College of Business and the campus IDEA club, sponsored
by Kelley. (The acronym stands for Innovation, Development & Entrepreneurship
Association.) The Fan Post was selected as an “incubator project” by the club, a way
of making resources available to assist the launch of a startup.
“The Fan Post represents an innovative product that has true marketability to a large
audience at a national level,” Kelley says. “The team of partners has worked hard to
find the right combination of design and functionality.”
The Fan Post’s business plan has been entered in the inaugural Canyon Challenge,
an upcoming entrepreneurial competition on campus, and the team is honing its
pitch to potential investors.
“It’s all been self-funded,” Sandy says. “There’s a lot of sweat equity in this. But we’ve
got a good cost model down, and the value is there for investors.”
The group began the arduous patenting process at the start of last year, knowing it
would need to protect itself legally. GCU has been approached about providing
a small manufacturing space on campus, which could help take the product to a
whole different level.
The goal?
“Total world domination,” Sandy jokes. “We’re engrossed in this. What’s kept us
going is that it comes down to the fan. (This product) relates to them.”
The team has been experimenting with the addition of sound – squeeze the
padded bumper and you hear, say, your alma mater’s fight song or your name
being chanted – along with other technological bells and whistles.
The gift possibilities seem endless: Father’s Day. Graduations. Employee and athletic
recognition dinners. These are the things that keep the partners text-messaging
one another well into the night.
“You almost have to have tunnel vision about this,” Kirk says, admitting to a level of
obsession about bringing the product to market. “When people see it, they get
the same excitement we have.”
Says Sandy: “When we look at it, we say, ‘Yesssss!’”
For more about the Fan Post, go to
. Videos can be seen
on YouTube.
The Fan Post team (from left): Ken Sandy, Denis Castro, Chris Kirk
and Brandon Hesterman.
