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A romantic date night between Jonathan Boos and his wife, Amie, was nearly derailed in 2006 in what can only be called the Travolta incident.
It started when Amie Boos tossed a shirt to her husband to wear for the evening. Problem was, says Jon Boos, the collar flared out and wouldn't stay in any position in which he put it. “I looked like John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever,” says Boos. “I ran around the house looking for a different shirt.”
Boos never found a replacement shirt. But what Boos did discover in his garage that night was he could tame the collar if he combined some paper clips with two small magnets. It worked so well, actually, that the makeshift magnetic Power Stays are now the foundation of a quirky and entrepreneurial menswear accessories business, Sarasota-based Würkin Stiffs.
The five-employee company, run by Boos out of a 2,400-square-foot facility, is on the cusp of a growth spurt. Boos plans to unveil a new line of products this year, such as leather goods and magnetic stays for polo shirts. And the mainstay Power Stays are now sold in more than 150 high-end department stores, including Nordstrom's, Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale's.
Plus, Boos, 36, was a featured entrepreneur this year on the popular ABC show Shark Tank, where budding entrepreneurs pitch their business in front of business tycoons. “Wherever you put your collar, that's where your collar stays,” Boos told the panel of five potential investors on the March 20 episode. “There's nothing like this out there in menswear today.”
Financing growth is a large challenge, which is why Boos pursued Shark Tank. He also appeared on The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch on CNBC in 2007, on the show's “My Idea Will Make Millions” segment. “As the company gets bigger,” says Boos, “it's all about cash flow.”
But past sheer cash, Boos seeks a partner who can guide him in how to grow a business with many more moving parts than when he started five years ago.
“I'm smart enough to know that I could bring this company to $1.5 million or $2 million, but I need someone in my corner” to grow bigger, says Boos. “If all I had to do was be the visionary and I had someone else to do logistics, it would be game on.”
Boos is close to that point. He expects to surpass $1 million in sales in 2011, more than double the firm's 2010 revenues.
Not bad, for an invention made in a garage one night on the fly. A New York native, Boos grew up in Citrus County in an entrepreneurial family. His father ran a lawn-care business and Boos' grandfather was also in business for himself. Says Boos: “We grew up knowing we were going into business for ourselves.”
Boos attended automotive training school after high school. He later ran a car insurance adjustment business in Sarasota and Fort Myers through a national franchise chain.
But the night he invented the Power Stays was also the night he found his calling. He sold his first Power Stays one day in 2006 while driving around to menswear stores in Sarasota and Tampa with his wife and young son.
“It's not a novelty, it's a novel idea,” says Boos. “We are trying to take the antiquated collar and make it practical.”
Jon Boos is five years into an entrepreneurial venture that started when he invented a magnetic device that could tame shirt collars. His business, Sarasota-based Würkin Stiffs, now sells a line of menswear accessories and is projected to surpass $1 million in revenues in 2011.
But Boos maintains an aw-shucks demeanor. “To this day,” says Boos, “it still astounds me that people buy this product I made.”
Some other Boos musings:
• On being the kind of kid who sold Red Hots candies on cold days in elementary school. “It wasn't so much about the money as it was I got off on filling a need or a void.”
• On why he quit his job Sept. 11, 2006, to work fulltime on Würkin Stiffs — while his wife was nine months pregnant: “I knew if I didn't do it fulltime, it would never work. My gut said what did I have to lose? I knew I had to go in with both feet.”
• On why he seeks a partner/investor with experience in the menswear and fashion industries: “I've never been afraid to say I don't know. I've never been afraid to ask for help.”
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