Back in September, Shopify put out a call: It would give up its ad slot in one upcoming MrBeast video (which, on average, are watched by 145 million people within their first 90 days on the platform) to a small business that could use the exposure.
That small business ended up being Kanga Coolers.
“Kanga Coolers started as a project for an entrepreneurship class at Clemson University in South Carolina. It could have stopped there, but the founders didn’t give up on their idea,” Shopify–a longtime partner of MrBeast–wrote in a LinkedIn post.
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It added that “SO many” businesses responded to its giveaway, but Kanga was the one that “came out on top.”
Kanga Coolers was invented by classmates Logan Lamance, Austin Maxwell, and Ryan Frazier in 2017. The three were tired of warm beer, so invented a soft case that fits around a small case of beer and, they say, keeps it cold for up to seven hours without the use of ice.
The trio pitched Kanga Coolers on Shark Tank in 2019, and though they received and accepted a $100,000 offer from Mark Cuban, the deal never closed.
“It’s amazing, man. That’s freaking awesome, dude. It’s incredible,” Maxwell told Shopify’s director of brand Brennan Loh in a video. “We’re so pumped, man. That’s electric. What’s insane is we thought Shark Tank was a big deal. And I think we got in front of 10 million people, so we can’t even fathom what 10 times that exposure would look like.”
Shopify says Kanga’s story shows “how one good idea–and the perseverance to see it through–can take you places you never expected.”
Like a MrBeast video.
