Big Belly!
Seahorse Power Company started up in 2003 when founder Jim Poss was walking in Boston and started thinking about the heaps of trash from overflowing trashcans. Poss had been working for an electric car company so was used to thinking about problems differently.
Seahorse’s flagship product is the Big Belly® trash receptacle unit. Big Belly® is a trash can that compacts trash at the collection point, so it collects about five times more trash than a standard trash can. This means less litter from overflowing cans, but it also means fewer trips by the trash truck to empty cans, lowering fuel consumption. Even better, the compaction unit runs on solar power, saving energy costs even further. Plus, since the units are cordless, they can be deployed virtually anywhere, like beaches, parks and other high trash areas.
Trash collection represents a saturated, highly competitive market, and entry into that market was not easy. The main customers are municipal governments. Seahorse sold their first unit in 2005. The next year, 2006, they hit $1M in sales. Today more than 500 units are deployed worldwide, and growth is exponential. Some large waste haulers like Casella are considering investing in Seahorse, so growth is forecasted to continue.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
