Juggling drinks is mother of invention for Memphis woman

By Jane Roberts, The Daily Memphian-undefined

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Natalie Boyatt looks at the pile of prototypes in her garage and sees the last seven years of her life.

Her quest to design a drink carrier with a lock-in-place handle includes the clunky, wooden version that was so big, when folded up, it looked like a shoeshine kit. She shakes her head at the sight of it.

Then there was the compressed foam design, which held so much promise, Boyatt and her team kept the concept alive two years.

That time may have been wasted. But there’s hardly time for remorse because the latest iteration, the streamlined 12-cup carrier, is gathering enough attention, including from an automaker and beachside food-and-beverage directors, that Boyatt’s biggest issue now may be scaling production from nothing to full shipping containers.

“We’ve had a lot of people saying, ‘Get ready,'” Boyatt says in her Memphis living room, staged with displays of her drink carrier, bevee, for the Advertising Specialties Inc. trade show in Chicago later this month.

“The thing is, this product doesn’t exist. We don’t know what to expect.”
It will sell for $79.99

Bevee is the creation of Boyatt’s own life experience as a pharmaceutical sales rep, expected to carry cardboard trays of drinks to physician offices, in heels and with a bag over one shoulder.

In one case, Boyatt, 45, ordered and paid for 10 coffee drinks and had managed to get them out of Starbucks, in and out of her car, then to the physician office, only to find that the front door pulled out, not in.

“So, I have no choice but to lean down, sit one tray down, open the door, hook my leg around it and work my way in there,” she said with a smirk. “I just said, ‘this is awful.'”

She went to work on product design.
The bevee handle locks in place with a patented locking mechanism. The carrier weighs about 2 pounds and is covered by a second patent. It is in the testing stage now to carry up to 25 pounds.

Bevee, also the company name, is the manifestation of Boyatt’s soul and what she calls her innate ability to engineer solutions.

Her entrepreneurial road is littered with what she can only call blessings, including that the trademark for the name bevee was owned by another person. But that person failed to use it in the three years before it became publicly available.

Boyatt’s Nashville lawyer grabbed it, and Boyatt was back to believing.

“I started seeing angels,” she said, showing photos in her phone of the constellation of lights in the Crosstown Concourse in abstract shapes of angels.
In the past year, every time she saw the semblance of an angel, she snapped a photo. There are nearly 250 images in her phone, Boyatt’s touchstone that this path was ordained.

Boyatt has been through two rounds of financing, including angel investors with Sage Advantage Fund.

“She had a rudimentary sketch when she came to us,” said John T. Novarese, partner with Sage Business Advisors in Memphis.

“I met with her a few times, really kind of just being nice. But the more we got into it, I said, ‘I’d really like you to meet my partners,'” he said.

“The more we looked under the hood, we all kind of scratched our heads,” Novarese said, “this could be a thing.”

Sage helped Boyatt put together the narrative that helped raise the capital, he said.

“It had to be an investable and defendable story. Because we have been around so many different companies, we were able to introduce her to a designer who did the early designs for bevee. That led to another introduction that was more on the engineering side and took it to the next level.”

Boyatt, “Memphis born and raised,” is gearing her company to the business-to-business sector: car manufacturers, resorts, restaurants, airlines, delivery drivers and pharmaceutical sales. She intends to sell directly to tailgaters and a whole contingent of people who have reason to deliver orders of drinks.

In August, she will start engineering a six-cup holder, sized to fit in a vehicle console and lift out easily by the extended handle, which folds to the side when not in use.
It is expected to sell for $49.99.

“And then, I’ve got four more products after that,” she said.

One is a self-contained toothbrushing station for people — like her teenage daughter, soon to have braces — who may find it inconvenient or impossible to brush at a sink. She has applied for a patent.

Others are versions of coolers still under wraps for patenting reasons.

If all goes well, Boyatt, a single mom who quit her pharmaceutical job last year to run with this dream, plans to place her first order for manufacture in early August.

“We are in talks right now with an auto manufacturer to buy a whole bunch to give as a promotional product when people buy a car,” Boyatt said.

If it pans out, the order will be 50,000 to 100,000 units.

Boyatt has contracted with a manufacturing agent in Utah who has secured space in China.

“I believe the minimum order is 3,000 units,” she said.

With packaging, one shipping container will hold 4,800 bevees. “It’s a question of: Are we ordering the minimum? Or are we ordering two containers?”

To find out more on the bevee, click here to visit the website.

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