POSITION Co-owners
COMPANY AudioBomb
REVENUE On track for $600,000-$750,000 in 2013
WHAT THEY DO Develop and sell cutting-edge portable audio
NEXT GOAL To double the number of distributors in 2014, from about 400 stores now
The bowlers weren’t biting. It was April 2012, and Ned Pearson and Adam Yglesias had seen little action at the River Center booth they’d leased to sell a portable speaker at the USBC Open Championships. The product had sold well the previous fall at Pearson’s Travel World, where Pearson is vice president; the friends—self-described “go-getters”—had surmised it would appeal to bowlers. “It was a flop,” says Ned with a laugh. But he and Yglesias used the downtime to brainstorm on the kind of speaker they envisioned selling. That April, they happened upon a different, powerful if simple prototype on which to build. By late September, their new company’s first product was available: the plum-size Spartan, at two price points—one Bluetooth ($49.95), the other not ($24.95).
Knowledgeable connections expedited the process by which the Spartan came to market. Pearson and Yglesias credit HitLights founders Bin Yu and Leo Zhao with helping to realize their concept, quickly. Pearson appealed to the two techies, who have a facility in China, to find a manufacturer there that would customize a speaker with “the latest and greatest” technology. HitLights not only “jumped right in,” says Yglesias; it became a third partner in AudioBomb. Through this synergy, they nailed down the Spartan’s unique mix of features, including a multifunctional dial that lets the user pause/play, skip songs, even answer the phone.
Some 12,000 units total had sold by year’s end, three-quarters of them the Bluetooth model. “What we created together was the most cutting-edge, best-sounding, best-priced Bluetooth speaker on the market,” says Pearson. Tilt, a Baton Rouge design firm, helped word spread: “Tilt did our website, our packaging, our branding,” says Yglesias. “They’ve done a great job for us.” Pearson notes the Spartan was the “best product” the National Luggage Dealers Association ever marketed via catalog.
AudioBomb sales in 2013 look to finish strong, with more products and more distributors of them lining up. This month, the Squish is due in stores, including Pearson’s, with 16,000 units presold: At $29.95, the colorful, splash-resistant speaker has a suction cup for attaching it to a shower, boat, golf cart, tailgate. And the partners have Kfx2 developing two apps to work with Spartans, to enable two to play together in stereo.
“It’s good to have a big failure under your belt. We had to spawn a business out of a big failure.”
