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NOBLESVILLE — A soccer dad and soccer coach saw a void in wireless phone case technology and had an idea - almost four years later that idea is now a successful Central Indiana based company.
“We started Scooch basically from scratch,” says John Stage, CEO of Scooch.
Stagge and Matt Foley, President of Scooch, put their heads together to come up with a new concept for cell phone cases. Their idea - a phone case with versatile one-handed use.
“We started working with it, and working with it, and started interviewing a lot of local retailers,” explains Stagge. “And when we started coming out with it, it came out like gangbusters. We were out selling in local stores here, it really exploded.”
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Scooch is currently sold in 6,000 retail environments across the US and Canada.
“We have grown from zero three and half years ago, to today our revenues were roundly $6-million dollars this year,” says Foley. “And that has been growth every year, we have at least doubled our revenues.”
This company did not find this current success without help.
“We relied heavily on the local community, business community to get going and starting,” says Foley.
Even the Noblesville Mayor's office was involved in getting Scooch moving.
“One of the greatest things that I felt when we started is the support from actually the local community, and really the local government,” explains Stagge “So they didn't ask for money. They asked, ‘How can I help you? What are the things that we need to do as a community, local to Noblesville, what can we do to help you?’”
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While Scooch was able to use local resources to build their company, they now use their product to give back to their community.
“We wanted to kind of give back to the community too because we got unbelievable support from local community purchasing our product and pitching our product to friends all over the United States,” says Stagge.
The charity, Prevail, is right down the street from Scooch headquarters. The non-profit helps victims of domestic abuse and crime get the support they may not get elsewhere. It's a partnership Scooch wears proudly on their product packaging.
As the company continues to expand Foley and Stagge say they do not have plans on leaving their Noblesville home anytime soon.
“There are so many reasons why it is so great to be here, talent, location and support,” says Foley. “It really has been a blessing to be here. And we are separated from all the other tech companies on the east and west coast, so we are thinking about it a little differently, and we are leaning on the community to help us build our brand.”
Scooch currently has nine employees, all Hoosiers. They say they plan to hire more people as their company expands.
“There are multiple reasons why we would want to stay here, with the local community and the talent pool that is here,” explains Foley. “I’ve grown up here, so I know exactly what downtown used to be like when I was a young boy to what it is now, and the development [in Indianapolis] is incredible. This makes the talent that is coming from our universities, Purdue, IU, Butler and all the other great universities around Indiana, all that talent is staying here. It used to be when I was growing up everyone who was finishing college, everyone wanted to go to Chicago. Now, I hear about everyone wanting to stay in Indy because it has really developed well, and that really helps us. We have got some terrific talented individuals around here, that can help us, that are helping us today on our team, currently.”
The Indiana Economic Development Corporation offers a handful of incentives and support for new businesses. More information can be found here: https://iedc.in.gov/startups.
Scooch’s website: https://scoochcase.com.
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