Forget the Tennis Ball: N.B. Entrepreneur Fighting Back Pain With The VertiBall
FREDERICTON– A New Brunswick entrepreneur wants to change the way people approach treating muscle pain.
Curtis Kennedy is the founder of Vertiball, a portable, mountable, rolling massager. The company launched its Kickstarter campaign to manufacture its first order on Tuesday.
Vertiball started out of a personal need for Kennedy. He was looking for a better way to care for his back and muscles after undergoing years of cancer therapy. For years, he was doing what many physiotherapists recommend, laying on a golf or tennis ball.
“Since I was in Grade 6, back and muscle pain has always been a big part of my life. Throughout the course of my day, I would get these very tense muscles in my lower and upper back. I spent most of my life rolling on top of a golf ball or a tennis ball,” says Kennedy.
“I never did it enough as I should have because it’s not really something that fits with your everyday life. To get down and lay on a golf ball three or four times a day, it’s not something that can get into your everyday way of doing things.”
I wanted to come up with something that would make personal muscle care easy in a way it never has been before.”
After two years of development and consulting with high-performance athletes and health professionals and 220 different designs, Kennedy and his team came up with the perfect design. The patent-pending mounting technology allows Vertiball to fasten to a wall securely while enabling the massage ball to rotate freely giving users the ability to apply as much or as little pressure to target areas on their body.
Kennedy says this design can be adjusted to suit anyone.
“If there’s going to be an effective tool industry-wise, it needs to work the exact same way for everyone. Sixty-five-year-old Barb needs to be able to use it as well as 24-year-old Brad,” he says. “Currently, there is not a tool in the industry that can do that for people. What Vertiball does is really put everyone at a level playing field.”
With the Kickstarter campaign will help fund the first round of Vertiballs. Backers are able to purchase one at a discounted rate. Money from the campaign will also go to help support further product development, such as new attachments for the lower back and neck
“The one thing we learned throughout developing all these different prototypes and going out and talking with people is that no two backs are the same. Everyone has different issues,” says Kennedy. “That’s why we made the system to have interchangeable attachments so that eventually the Vertiball brand can release these different attachments that can help with different areas of the back in better ways.”
Once the first round of Vertiballs purchased through Kickstarter are shipped in May, the goal is to focus on e-commerce through the company website and Amazon. From there, the goal is to partner with retailers.
“In March and April of this year, I’m heading out to do some trips around North America to try to develop relationships with retailers. Eventually, we want to make the transition from primarily e-commerce to a mix of both,” says Kennedy.
“Ultimately, we expect the majority of our sales long-term will come from physical retail.”