After high school, Ben attended Clemson University, where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering. This led to work as a contract designer, collaborating with numerous companies and gaining valuable experience in automation and product design. This period allowed him to develop his skill set and acquire knowledge in various fields. Although he often worked behind the scenes, his contributions were instrumental in helping companies achieve patents and scale up their operations.
For the next stage of his journey, he transitioned from contract engineering to starting his own business, SC Machine Works, which focused on low- to mid-volume complex machining. He recognized a need for technology-forward machine shops in his area and aimed to provide innovative solutions.
This venture eventually led him to sell the business and pursue a new opportunity in the packaging industry. In late 2015, he started a new venture that initially explored various forms of packaging, including reusable plastic packaging for mushrooms.
At that time, Ben was working with a large e-commerce company under a non-disclosure agreement. This company was looking for a more sustainable packaging solution, which coincided with the engineering work he was doing at the time. He had noticed a problem in the market where it took several months to go from the design stage to a finished product, particularly for custom or formed packaging. Ben set out to streamline this process, and his quick turnaround time of 48 hours gained attention from many companies.
One day, while walking through downtown Greenville, Ben and his wife came across a long string of plastic bubble wrap in a ditch. His wife suggested he find a solution to the problem of non-biodegradable bubble wrap, to which Ben initially responded that many people had been working on it for years. However, this sparked an idea in Ben's mind. He wondered if it was possible to form paper into something that resembled bubble wrap, providing a sustainable alternative.
This set into motion a development process that followed a design theory and engineering approach. Ben focused on understanding the customers' needs and defining the problem before working through a step-by-step process.
Ben and his team set to work experimenting with different patterns and designs, eventually creating bubbles in both directions. This allowed the paper to nest on top of each other, making it more practical for packaging purposes. The bubbles were engineered to have a structure that looked and felt like traditional plastic
bubble wrap. This was a significant breakthrough and his aha moment, as he realized that paper could be formed into bubble shapes, providing a viable alternative to plastic bubble wrap – a solution that was both sustainable and functional.
This led to the creation of Bubble Paper, a sustainable packaging solution that could be used by homeowners for moving or by e-commerce companies for shipping products. Around 2017-2018, the company shifted its focus solely to producing bubble paper.
The name "Bubble Paper" was chosen to highlight the similarities to bubble wrap while emphasizing its sustainability. The goal is for Bubble Paper to become a household name, with people choosing it over traditional bubble wrap because it is biodegradable and can be recycled multiple times. The paper used for Bubble Paper goes through a material recovery facility, further contributing to its circularity.
So, what's been the most rewarding part of your journey?
I think just learning a lot as you go has been extremely rewarding. There's just no other way of learning as much stuff. It's kind of like a trial-by-fire MBA. There's no other way of learning it unless you just do it. And so, there's a lot of rewarding pieces there. You get to meet and work with a lot of people and companies that you have never worked with before—and it's kind of fun to do that. Those things are kind of eye-opening, and it becomes pretty rewarding along the way.
What do you think is the biggest misconception that people have about being a founder of a business or an entrepreneur, and how would you debunk that?
It depends on who you talk to. The joke is that if you start a company, you can work half days – it just depends on if you want to work the first half or second half of the day. For a lot of people that I've talked to who want to start a company or go out on their own, it's definitely going to be a lot more work. Coming from the corporate world, it's a little bit more structured ― more eight to five or nine to five. And you're not going to be overtaxed, but you have to come into the office every day.
And then, when you start your own business, it's a lot different from that. You're responsible for everything. So, I think the biggest misconception is just probably the workload and the things that you're going to have to do long term, the time you have to put into it, the things you're going to have to learn that you don't know today.
You touch everything, or at least in my case, I touch everything from social media marketing to analyzing a machine in the back. You wear every hat and sometimes three hats at the same time.
Were there programs that you participated in to help you with your founder journey?
Yes, we did. The Founder Institute was probably the biggest one. It's an idea accelerator that was probably the biggest data point influence on our success. We've used the resources from that program in a lot of different ways.
They have a global mentoring program and if you pour yourself into that program, you can connect with some mentors and people in the industry that you really need to talk to. We were able to find a lot of good resources through the Founder Institute, such as our legal team, which also handles some things for Tesla and SpaceX. They do legal work for patents, so there are good synergies there.
SCRA/SC Launch supported us pretty early on with grant funding and also follow-on investment. They were pretty instrumental in those earlier stages when we were pre-scaling and trying to get our feet under us, get legal protection, and get everything set up.
Can you tell us about an a-ha moment – a breakthrough moment or decision that had a truly significant impact on the business?
My wife and I were walking around downtown Greenville and there was a long string of bubble wrap in the ditch. And she said, “You need to fix that problem.” And I was like, yeah, that's a problem that's been around for 70 years. Thousands of people are trying to work on this problem. So, I kind of joked about it. But then I really thought about it and wondered if we could use biodegradable plastics, but they're hard to form.
Then I started to wonder if I could form paper into something that resembles bubble wrap. I used an engineering design theory process to define the problem, understand the customers, and work through this five-step process.
What came out of that was a form technology that we developed called isotropic forming. We're now able to create a bubble in the paper that has a structure that looks and feels like a bubble. When you're trying to package something, you want to be able to use something that kind of feels like it should work.
That was the big a-ha moment. We’ve created something formable and can make this more of a bubble shape, and we can do it with paper versus plastic. That laid all the groundwork.
So, what's a good name for this? Like bubble wrap―Bubble Paper. And now it would be great if it was a household name. Don't use bubble wrap, use Bubble Paper. It's sustainable and biodegradable. Now if it lands in a ditch, it's paper, it will dissolve away. Or it can be recycled over and over and over again.
Now tell us about an oh-shit moment or significant challenge that you faced, and then how you overcame it.
So, our first product was bubble paper and bubble paper wrap. You put this in any homeowner’s hands, and they’re like, ‘Oh my god, this is great! I can recycle this. I don't have this massive box full of Styrofoam and I can pack it into one blue bin each week.’ And so, consumers are easy to market to. They love it, and then they become our ambassadors.
The other side of that equation is a struggle - getting into the big box retailers. Their requirements are different from what the end consumer wants. They obviously still want sustainability, and they'll create a report at the end of the year that showcases what they've done for sustainability. But there are still certain metrics that they need to hit, like financials.
But probably the biggest problem and pain point we've experienced is heavy greenwashing from companies and products before us. As we’re trying to sell to someone, they’ll say, ‘Oh, yeah, we've heard this story before.’ So now we have to spend a lot more time and energy building marketing and branding materials around the educational piece.
We not only have to prove our solution is great, but then we have to prove why everyone else's solution didn't work and why it was greenwashed. So greenwashing is one of those things that keeps sticking its head up and is the problem child that we have to wrestle with a lot. This makes it more difficult to get into places than it should be. And then we have to over-educate because you have to un-educate and then re-educate — so that becomes a challenge that really shouldn't be there.
What advice would you give to other founders that want to aggressively scale up?
There's never a perfect idea or a perfect stepping stone because the entrepreneurial path is all kinds of crazy. But if you can bring in funds or create connections with individuals or angel investors tied to those funds, sooner, then you can develop a lot better pathway that can allow you to hit certain milestones to get you to that next tranche of investment. Then you're closer to the bigger style investors and money earlier.
So, early on, get aligned with industry partners, bigger types of VC funds, and connections that can support those big investments you think you'll need. Even if the money doesn't come from those organizations, it can come adjacent through those connections. You might give up a little bit of control and ownership early, but where can that take you? Then build out those next steps to determine if it's worth giving up a certain percentage of the company to hit a milestone. And if you run into a problem, then you can always redefine things along the way.
What's the best piece of business advice you have received?
Some of the best advice I got is that things are never going to turn out the way that you plan. So, never stop learning and never stop going. Because you'll eventually get there and find that solution. The best mentality you can have is to not quit and keep moving forward, and you’ll figure it out, fix it, or change it. So, just keep moving forward is probably one of the biggest pieces of advice and that's the advice I usually give.
The other piece of advice that I give to anyone wanting to start a business is to make sure you understand what type of business you really want to build. And make sure that the business aligns with your end goal. So don’t just figure out exactly what type of business you want, but also figure out your exit strategy at the end. Most people don't do that part early enough. They need to consider their long-term goals and how they can create a business that is valuable and attractive to potential buyers or investors.
Looking ahead, what do you want your company to look like one year from now? What changes would you like to see, whether it's the market, product, people, or your culture?
One year from now, expansion is probably the biggest thing. We're on that upward-trending scale. We're happy with the machinery. We're happy with how everything performs. Now we're just going to do a lot more of it. So, we're going to open up a couple more locations next year, which will be big. And that's going to allow us to exponentially grow with each location that we add. We're just going as fast as we can to get more products in more customers’ hands.
