Local entrepreneurs launch outdoor game

BY JOSEPH PICARD
SPARTA — Fun and games isn’t always fun and games.
That’s something Philipp Elliott already knew and Anthony Esposito has come to learn. Sparta residents Esposito and Elliott are business partners whose outdoor game, Bean Bag Bucketz, is on the cusp of coming to market.
“When someone tells me they’ve got a good idea, I just say good luck,” said Esposito, the game’s inventor. “You need luck, and determination, as well as a good product. It’s been frustrating at times. It’s been a long haul.”
But the partners’ journey may be reaching its destination or, at least, a significant station on the way. On Tuesday, May 17, Bean Bag Bucketz launched on Kickstarter, the well-known global crowdfunding platform focused on creative projects.
“Kickstarter will not only make people familiar with our product, but it will also allow us to share the story behind the product and create a community for the game,” said Elliott, a former executive in the retail toy industry and founder and CEO of PEBET, LLC, a company devoted to developing innovative ideas and bringing them to market.
“Kickstarter and this item will help us build our brand,” he said. “The back story to Bean Bag Bucketz is a great story.”
It started four years ago in June, at the Jersey shore town of Manasquan. Esposito, his wife Jane and their two young sons, Anthony and Sammy, were taking in a summer day at the beach.
“Sammy was a little bored, so I thought up a game for him to play,” Esposito said.
He took a stick he found on the beach, stuck it upright in the sand and set a large seashell in its fork. Then he and his boys stood at a distance and tossed smaller seashells, trying to drop them into the larger shell.
“We played for three hours, had a great time,” Esposito said. “My sons said it was cool.”
Back home in Sparta, Esposito set up a stake in his yard, substituted a Tupperware container for the large seashell and the boys played seashell toss on their lawn. Esposito made other adjustments, designing the pole, switching from seashells to bean bags. He figured he was on to something and soon contacted a patent attorney, beginning the game’s “long haul” to Kickstarter.
But getting a patent, as Esposito learned, can be a lengthy, complex and costly matter.
“There are attorney fees, application fees, and a great deal of back and forth,” Elliott explained. “Patents have to be researched and can be structured broadly or more narrowly. Many people trying to market their idea give up after the first rejection, simply because they don’t have the money to keep going. But Anthony found the money to keep going.”
“There were some things we did without,” Esposito said. “My wife stood by me. Her support has been fantastic. There was a point where I decided I had to fight for this, that there would be no turning back.”
People liked the game and Esposito, who continued to hone and improve it, took heart from the good local reaction.
“I brought it to a party once. Everyone enjoyed it,” he said. “They were playing and having fun with it before they learned the rules.”
There are actually several ways to play games with Bean Bag Buckets, tossing the little colored bean bags into the cup-like buckets on the pole. Pleased and encouraged as Esposito was by the game’s reception among neighbors, the process of moving the item toward the marketplace was glacially slow. Esposito came to recognize another necessary factor in the success of such endeavors.
“You have to have the right connections,” he said. “If you don’t find the right person to help you, you’re lost.”
Enter Elliott, via the Sparta schools Parent-Teacher Organization’s TREP$ program. This initiative, usually conducted in afterschool workshops, is aimed at teaching entrepreneurship and business methods to students in grades 4 to 8. In the Sparta program, 5th graders Sammy Esposito and Ethan Elliott attended a TREP$ presentation by Ethan’s father, Philipp, who explained to students how he helped the inventor of MyPak knapsacks bring his product to market. Sammy went home and told his brother Anthony and the two told their father that Ethan’s dad may be the guy he needed to move Bean Bag Bucketz to the next level.
“We also had a mutual friend,” Elliott said. “She told me she had a friend who had a game he did not know what to do with next. She said we two should get together.”
They did, in April of last year. They played the game and Elliott quickly saw the potential, and envisioned the steps Esposito should take. Or rather, the steps they should take together. In June, 2015, the two men formed Creative Brainworks, LLC. In October they registered a domain name, and in November the game was trademarked. In February of this year, the patent was finally allowed.
Still, there were bumps in the road. Elliott used his connections to get Bean Bag Bucketz a look from QVC.
“We went down to Philadelphia. Phil set the game up in the parking lot,” Esposito said. “The QVC people came out and played. They said they loved it.”
But no follow-up call came from the worldwide televised home-shopping network.
Esposito shrugged. “Sometimes you’ve just got to move along. I don’t let myself get too excited. Anything can fall apart. You’ve got to stay calm.”
“He’s the inventor, I’m on the business side — we listen to each other, get along great together,” Elliott said. “I’ve been working on this for a year. We’re prepared and have developed a good plan. Now we’re going on Kickstarter, which can be a great vehicle for raising funds.”
Kickstarter works by soliciting supporters for the product, who will contribute donations in return for certain rewards including, in this case, games of Bean Bag Bucketz. If, after a 30-day period, the funding goal has been reached, Kickstarter will subtract its percentage and Esposito and Elliott will have the money they need to market the game to a wide audience.
“These guys are local entrepreneurs, and we’re proud of them,” said Sparta Mayor Christine Quinn. “We have made a concerted effort to support local physical businesses and lately we’ve been extending that support to virtual businesses. I’m very excited about Bean Bag Bucketz.”
Preview the game at www.beanbagbucketz.com
Check out the Kickstarter site at http://bit.ly/b3bucketz