When this father-son team’s extreme pogo stick got stuck in the muck the first time around, they shelved it. Now, as the trend catches on, business is bouncing back with a vengeance.

By Lindsay Holloway

Despite having three kids of his own, 35-year-old Brian Spencer is a kid at heart. He’s always been an extremesports fanatic, drawing on the “I am invincible” mentality of youth when he propels himself into a helicopter spin on skis or flies off jumps on a dirt bike. This daring, adventurous quality is also what led him to his latest feat: launching Vurtego LLC.

Inspired by an equally energetic cousin in 1999, Spencer approached his father, Bruce, now 61, whose background is in aerospace engineering, to create the first advanced pogo stick targeted at adults in the extremesports market. Bruce decided a pneumatic device would work best to support the weight of an adult and provide the ability to launch the rider several feet high. “It became pretty obvious that it was going to work,” says Brian.

In 2002, the Vurtego pogo stick demoed at the Winter Olympics festivities in Salt Lake City, garnering extensive media coverage and customer interest. But father and son came home to a falling stock market, and with no one willing to fund their endeavor, the invention sat dormant. Meanwhile, the world leader in pogo stick manufacturing, SBI, jumped on the idea.

When SBI’s Flybar was released in 2004, Brian and Bruce were stunned at the product’s inferiority. Within months, they were back at work, refinancing Bruce’s home, finalizing the design, securing a patent and founding Mission Viejo, California-based Vurtego.

In January 2006, they released the finished product, and in the first month, revenue exceeded $50,000. Sales have tapered since, but Vurtego has been able to capitalize on the initial interest it created in 2002 and the new market SBI helped carve. “They’re spending a lot of time and effort validating the whole concept of adult pogo sticking,” Brian says. “We’re not spending a dime on marketing. We’re letting them lead the way, and [now we’ve] come in with a superior product, taking advantage of their first-to-market position.”

Lindsay Holloway is a writer for Entrepreneur magazine.