A Bright Idea

By Kelsey Waters

--Albert Einstein

Mississippi State University is home to brilliant minds, passionate artists and entrepreneurial thinking, all merging with some fascinating results. When considering some of the most recent successes, one cannot help but take a closer look at Vibe, LLC.

The cornerstone on which Vibe was founded is not made of stone at all. In fact, the building block for founders Hagan Walker and Kaylie Mitchell is a tiny, plastic, reusable cube.

One of many student enterprises nurtured in the MSU Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach, Vibe’s roots grew from a class assignment.

Mitchell, a graphic design major, was challenged to encourage people to drink more tea as part of a branding project. Her artistic mind thought that adding color to tea would be enticing, and she imagined a teabag that would radiate colors when steeped in hot water. To promote her imagined drink company, she tapped the technical mind of Hagan Walker to design a device that could make beverages glow for product photos.

Walker, an electrical engineering student, put his skills to work. With Mitchell’s concept in mind, he sought out different conduits for the lights. While he started with a teabag, Walker soon realized other options would be needed. In a moment of curiosity and creativity, he stuffed a light into a travel toothbrush cap, waterproofed it with hot glue and dunked it into a glass of water. As the twinkling light began to show through, the seed for Glo® was planted.

“Kaylie had this graphic design project where she wanted tea to light up,” recalls Walker. “We sat on the floor at my house for hours the night before it was due while I tried to figure out how to make the light liquid activated. When the first prototype was completed, it was nothing more than a small circuit encased in hot glue. It’s pretty funny to look back on that now.”

They proceeded with the project, and the idea to turn their conceptual company into a real one took hold.

The duo’s first exposure to the Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach came in 2015, when an introductory meeting with Director Eric Hill led them to participate in the annual “E-Week” event that offers a number of competitions for start-ups. With only four days’ notice, they entered with their 117th revision of Glo and emerged victorious, taking the top overall award. Along with bragging rights and recognition, their wins in several categories meant $15,000 in start-up funds. The imaginative, brightly colored Glo units catapulted Walker and Mitchell into a whirlwind future.

“Winning E-Week enabled us to take an idea and actually start a company,” Walker says. “Not only did the money provide us with a foundation on which to start, the affirmation that others also saw our long-term vision was a wonderful motivator.”

Investors saw the potential, and more than $100,000 in seed money enabled the pair to develop, test and begin producing a marketable product. Along the way, Walker and Mitchell became versed in every aspect of establishing a business – insurance, patents, FDA approvals, taxes, prototypes, product safety and manufacturing contracts, to name a few.

Glo cubes are liquid activated, lighted drink enhancers. When dropped into a beverage, they cycle through a range of colors, illuminating it. The light comes from an electrical circuit that is completed when a cube is submerged. Once a drink is empty, the circuit is disconnected, extinguishing the light. The device has been a hit with Starkville bartenders and waiters – one of the first test markets – because they can easily see when a refill is needed.

Since the electric start of their Glo project in 2015, Walker and Mitchell have pushed forward quickly. First noticed by the Tipsy Bartender, a popular YouTube host, their creativity was thrust into the limelight. In 2016, the Vibe founders were invited to participate in the 88th Annual Academy Awards!

At first, Mitchell was sure she was being spammed but eventually realized the invitation to showcase Glo in an Academy Awards VIP tent was sincere. However, a trip to the Oscars was not in the newly founded company’s budget, so the entrepreneurs opted to set up a GoFundMe account. Supporters quickly provided enough funding to get them there.

As a result, in February 2016, Mitchell, Walker and newly named Director of Business Development Anna Barker – a recent COB graduate – set off for a once-in-a-lifetime Hollywood adventure. In the VIP tent prior to the awards show, Glo cubes were found in every drink served. They created a lot of buzz among invited guests – actors, singers, models, other celebrities and entertainment executives. Actors such as Adrienne Moore, from the Netflix Original hit Orange Is the New Black, and Lonnie Chavis, from the popular NBC show This is Us, were able to meet the Vibe team and learn about the product, taking home as many Glo units as they could hold in their arms.

“Seeing celebrities and people from the entertainment industry get enthused about our product was incredibly encouraging and exciting,” comments Walker. “We had a wonderful time, and it was a really great experience.”

The Vibe team works hard to avoid the distractions of burgeoning renown and focuses on customers instead. They impart a favorite story of a young boy named Bishop.

Bishop is an energetic five-year-old boy with autism. His mother, Jesse, shares that among his struggles, one of the hardest parts of their daily routine was bath time. In an effort to make it a little easier for her son, Jesse dropped Glo units in his bath. As the cubes sent sparkling rays of colored light into the bathwater, the young child became more focused on the curious light than on the stress of bath time. Suddenly, a young mother’s tough moment had become full of her child’s laughter instead of fear and frustration. Glo would change the daily life of this family…and in turn, this family’s success with Glo would help shape the future of the company.

Learning of Jesse’s discovery with Bishop sparked a new idea that has led the Vibe team into a popular and profitable market – bath products. Working with Musee Bath of Madison, MS, Vibe provides Glo units for hand-pressed bath balms, which Musee makes with essential oils and other natural ingredients. The lighted version, which encapsulates Glo cubes in blue and gold swirls of cedarwood and olive oil, is appropriately named “This Little Light of Mine.”

Besides the bath balms, Vibe has developed specialized versions of the Glo cubes for occasions like birthdays and bachelorette parties. All of their products can be purchased online at www.getglo.com. Glo was also recently released on the online product launch platform The Grommet.

“Our partnership with Musee has allowed us to enter a whole new market, and we are gearing up to expand into the children’s market next year,” Barker says. “I think the future is wide open, and I am excited to be a part of it.”

Mitchell graduated last December and Walker in 2015. Barker completed her degrees in international business-marketing and Spanish in May 2017. Now the three – along with a cadre of interns – are at work in their downtown Starkville office, developing business, overseeing production and brainstorming new directions. Vibe, LLC, which two years ago was an imagined company conceived for a class assignment, is now valued at $2.4 million.

Through the Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach, students like Mitchell and Walker have been able to bring their ideas to fruition through creativity, innovation and passion. As products like Glo continue to find their beginnings in the entrepreneurship center, Mississippi State will continue to be a beacon for future invention and discovery.