KALAMAZOO ? mophie, which is commercializing the next generation batteries for mobile phones, should close June with $100 million in sales so far this year and might crash through the $250 million sales threshold by year’s end, a senior executive said this week.
Shawn Dougherty, chief operating officer and co-founder, said the company closed 2012 with $150 million in sales, triple the $47 million achieved in 2011. But will do at least $225 million this year and perhaps $250 million.
mophie, the manufacturer of the juice pack, billed as the first ?Works With iPhone? portable battery solution certified by Apple – sells millions of portable power units as well as phone covers and accessories for smart phones and tablet computers in more than 100 countries and 20,000 retail stores worldwide.
Another member of the mophie leadership team, Senior Vice President Jeff Bocan, the former managing director of Beringea, predicts Mophie will rack up a billion dollars in sales within a few years. Bocan, when at Beringea, led a Series A round in August 2010 that invested about $4 million in mophie. In addition to his responsibilities at mophie, Bocan will remain affiliated with Beringea, transitioning to a venture partner role.
?I am helping mophie mange the next phase of growth,? Bocan said. ?I?m helping them take the company from $100 million to $1 billion. From a career standpoint, there aren?t many companies where you have a chance to do what mophie is about to do. It will be a blast.?
Certainly sitting on the mophie board for the past couple of years has given Bocan an inside look at Mophie and its potential.
?It?s rare to move into a job where you know the people who started it extremely well and know the path they are taking,? he said. ?I was at a venture backed startup 13 years ago before I joined Beringea. I got into this business to do the more entrepreneurial things. Now I?ve gone back to where I started from a career stand point.?
This week Bocan was packing up his house in Michigan to relocate to Southern California, where Mophie?s corporate headquarters has been located since 2009. Inside sales, accounting, distribution and customer service are handled in Michigan at a former Sears store in Kalamazoo Mophie moved into in late April, not far from the Western Michigan University Business Technology and Research Park. These services had been handled in Paw Paw at a warehouse behind the St. Michelle Winery. Assembly is done in China.
Bocan said coming back to California is a homecoming for him. He grew up in Rancho Cucamonga.
?I haven?t lived near my family in four years,? Bocan said. ?I have two kids and another on the way, so we will have built in baby sitters now.?
Mophie also is renovating a 47,000 square foot facility in Orange County that it will lease, moving from a 12,000 square foot building in Santa Anna that had the company operating out of four suites, Dougherty said.
She added the extra space in Michigan and California is needed to accommodate the company?s rapidly growing workforce, now some 200 strong. Some 45 full-time employees are based in Michigan, along with 40 temporary workers.
Dougherty said Mophie is gearing up for international growth. Currently about 80 percent of its products are sold in North America, while worldwide 80 percent of iPhone sales are outside North America. To help reach this market, Mophie hired Darren Shimkus, senior vice president of global sales and development, to launch Mophie?s new web site and lead its international push.
It?s been quite a ride for Dougherty, who graduated from Kalamazoo Central and attended classes at Michigan State University. She co-founded the company in 2005 in Oshtemo Township in a pole barn behind her family?s Dougherty?s Corners Market on West Main Street. Then it was called mStation Audio LLC, and sold audio docking systems for Apple?s iPod music players. In 2006, Dougherty and co-founder Daniel Huang acquired mophie, assumed its name and shifted into designing and manufacturing cases and accessories for the iPhone. That business was launched in 2007. The rest, they say, is history.
?I?m living the dream,? she said. ?There?s not a day we don?t have challenges. It keeps it real. But it has been a wonderful experience. Every day it continues to be exacting and rewarding.?
