PopSockets CEO’s answer to hard times: GET A GRIP

BOULDER — David Barnett remembers seeing a recent cartoon that purported to list “reasons why your company became a model business.” The choices were:
A. Long-term planning.
B. The CEO.
C. The pandemic.

All three reasons have provided a boost to PopSockets, the plucky Boulder-based company that cut its chops by making grips that attach to the back of cellphones and other mobile devices — and then making them fun. But Barnett’s unquenchable spirit and drive — and his knack for overcoming adversity — has fueled it all.

Barnett was a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2010 when he gave birth to PopSockets. Annoyed with his iPhone headphone cord always getting tangled in his pocket, he came up with a mechanism for the back of his phone that would solve the problem. With help from a Kickstarter campaign and local investors as well as an insurance payout he received after a wildfire destroyed his home, he founded a company that has sold units numbering in the hundreds of millions, and which Inc. magazine would call the second fastest-growing privately held company in America. Ernst & Young Global Ltd. named Barnett National Entrepreneur of the Year in 2018, the year in which the growing company moved from a 25,000-square-foot space at 3033 Sterling Circle to 46,000 square feet of leased space in the Flatirons Park development at 5757 Central Ave.

He has fought to protect his brand against counterfeits, battled Amazon and other large tech companies, rode out supply-chain and manufacturing hiccups, and continues to fight for antitrust legislation.

COVID-19 was just another dragon to be slain.

“Back in March last year, when we shut down our office, we quickly prepared for the worst,” he said. “We had a 50% reduction in sales. We ended up laying off 60 people and furloughed another 40 to preserve our cash. We cut our annual spending by $40 million. Our products were in 110,000 doors, and most of those were closed for some time if not a significant portion.”

A loan through the Payroll Protection Program helped, however, he said, and “we survived with cash and started hiring again at the end of last year. We’re now pretty close to pre-COVID levels of production and sales.”

But as usual for Barnett, mere survival wasn’t good enough.

At the height of the pandemic, PopSockets expanded its Poptivism charitable outreach by creating two special grip designs, 100% of whose sales go to supporting Doctors Without Borders and Feeding America.

On the business side, “the lesson we learned is that we’re shifting into a direct-to-consumer model and building a stronger relationship through our website,” he said. “We’ve invested heavily in building these relationships and improving our e-commerce.”

Barnett had once characterized online retail giant Amazon as practicing “bullying with a smile.” Now, he said, “we’re still testing our relationships with Amazon, and the fakes are under control.”

It’s not that PopSockets is giving up on in-store sales, however. Maybe just the opposite. Barnett said the more dynamic online presence may improve brick-and-mortar performance because “people are aware of our product and more engaged when they’re in the stores.”

As in many facets of the business world, the pandemic also provided an opportunity to develop post-COVID strategies.

“We have ambitious goals to grow locally and introduce new products,” Barnett said. “We have a pipeline of innovative products starting this fall — some that were developed during pandemic, some we’ve been working on for a number of years, and some in a mad rush.”

One new arrival is the MagSafe collection for iPhone that has a magnetic platform on the back. Another is a plant-based phone grip called PopGrip Plant, which is made with corn starch, castor beans and canola oil.

“We’ll also be expanding outside mobile accessories,” Barnett said.

That should help keep the company’s 240 employees busy, he said, and “we’ll probably hire another 20 to 30 this year.”

Interviewed by phone just after landing in Peoria, Illinois, Barnett wouldn’t give details about a product PopSockets plans to unveil in September; he’d only confirm that it was “something I was holding in my hand on the flight. Something physical.”

He was much more open, however, about a new venture that’s less physical and more philosophical — not surprising for someone with a Ph.D. in philosophy. Barnett called the initiative an “Eternal Positivity Machine.”

“We want to transform PopSockets from a company founded to solve a simple problem to a lasting global brand that has an increasingly positive impact on the world,” Barnett said. “We’re focusing on sustainability and launching innovative programs to offset carbon emissions. We have an interesting new take on offsetting our emissions that we’ll be announcing at the end of the year.”

That’s PopSockets’ future. What about Barnett’s?

“All my time is spent with PopSockets and family,” he said, although “I might try to ride my bike up a volcano in Hawaii in a couple weeks.”

Another mountain to conquer. So what else is new?

on Facebook on LinkedIn