I helped build Hiball
to nine figures.
Then I wrecked my back.

From 2002 on, Hiball Energy grew from a San Francisco kitchen operation into a clean-label organic energy brand shipping to every major grocery chain in the country. Sourcing, manufacturing, distribution — we learned commodity beverage from the bottom up.

In July 2017, Anheuser-Busch InBev acquired the business. The lesson from thirteen years of category-creation work: niche doesn't mean small if the positioning is clean. Healthy energy was niche until it wasn't.

Six months after the exit, chronic low-back pain. MRIs, PT, rest, repeat. A wooden dowel rod from my physical therapist — hold it vertically behind your back, shoulder blades touching it at the top, tailbone at the bottom. Twenty minutes a day.

It worked. Proprioceptively, my body re-learned where neutral was. The problem was obvious: I was a grown adult standing around my office holding a broomstick against my back. Nobody does this for twenty minutes a day, every day, forever.

The first prototype was foam pool noodles and PVC pipe. The second was a heat-formed Kydex chassis with aluminum poles — closer, but rigid in the wrong places. The third version — shaped EVA foam contoured to the thoracic spine, carbon-fiber poles, elastic side-tension straps — became BAKBŌN.

In 2021 we filed USPTO application 17/142578 on the shapable chassis mechanism, with co-inventors Craytor, Hanchak, and Livingston. It hasn't changed since.

Every PT, chiropractor, and strength coach we demoed BAKBŌN with asked the same question: where has this been? Dr. Jeffrey Tucker (past president of the ACA Rehab Council) signed on as clinical advisor. Kyle Morris, Golf Digest Top 50 instructor, started putting his students in it. Lara Heimann of LYT Yoga built a 30-day alignment program around it. Tracy Hayes (MobilityChick, trusted by 27 of 30 MLB orgs) uses it in-session.

We're not a wellness brand pretending to have clinical authority. We're a product the clinical world asked us to build.

The posture-wearable category is a graveyard of sunsetted apps and bricked firmware. Lumo shut down in 2018 — its hardware doesn't work anymore. Upright requires adhesive refills at $9.95 per 10-pack. The entire Amazon tier is cheap elastic that teaches your body nothing.

BAKBŌN is mechanical. It has no dependencies. It will still work in 2046. That is the feature.