Wheel Shields, a longboard accessory company, earlier this month won third place in the Cupid’s Cup, a competition for start-up entrepreneurs that attracted 150 entries.
Wheel Shields won $5,000 in the competition, which is co-sponsored by the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship of the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland College Park and the Baltimore company Under Armour’s founder and CEO Kevin Plank.
"It comes from a passion for longboarding," says Chase Kaczmarek, founder and CEO of Shield Boards, LLC, the corporate entity for Wheel Shields. The 21-year old senior at the University of Maryland College Park plans a major expansion of the company--out of his College Park apartment, for one--after he graduates this spring.
Longboards are essentially elongated skateboards with bigger wheels. “They’re more for transportation and speed, not for tricks. They’re popular on college campuses," says Kaczmarek, a major in management.
However, longboards appear to have a design flaw known as wheel bite, when the wheels come in contact with the board. Two years ago, Kaczmarek turned too sharply on his longboard and was thrown to the ground. He ended up with a concussion.
That gave him the idea for what turned out to be Wheel Shields, a protective cover around each wheel. He founded the company in 2012 with his idea and preliminary drawings but no actual product.
For that, he turned to Reddit.com, where he made contact with a product developer, who helped him come up with a three-dimensional model. A fabrication shop turned the 3-D model into a prototype.
To fund the start-up company, in 2013 Kaczmarek turned to Kickstarter.com. His goal was to raise $25,000 but he raised $31,000 from 430 people in 29 countries.
He also turned to social media, starting a Facebook page that now has 115,000 followers. “We were driving up demand long before we had a product,” he says.
Wheel Shields are made in China and cost $50 for a set of four, and are sold on WheelShields.com and in in 30 longboard stores around the world via wholesale arrangements and distributors. The company is in the black to tune of $40,000.
Once Kaczmarek graduates this spring from College Park and is able to devote himself full-time to the company, he has plans for a major expansion that include the possibility of venture capital funding.
Kaczmarek will relocate the company from his apartment in College Park to either D.C. or Arlington. “I’m considering accelerators and cowork places,” he says.
He intends to hire three to four staffers, including a COO and people in finance and product development.
Product expansion is also in the works. The current version of Wheel Shields fits one size of longboards. Kaczmarek plans to have another version, for a different size longboard, on the market by this fall.
Next year, in 2015, he hopes to expand into skateboarding, which would triple the size of his market.