It took about four years to bring Suction Up to the market, solving a problem of boats colliding with each other and getting damaged during trips to the lake. Photo via Suction Up

Two Fresno entrepreneurs in the insurance game are making a splash with a patented invention targeted at boat owners.

Vice President Justin Perry and Brandon Cox, insurance broker at James G. Parker Insurance Associates, are making waves as inventors of a product called Suction Up.

Suction Up, which is also the name of the company, connects boats using suction cups. The device uses springs to compress the weight, allowing minimal impact to the boats from the movement caused by tides and waves.

Suction Up had its soft launch this summer, with each of the 300 units selling via their website, suctionup.com, in a matter of days.

Perry and Cox, both life-long boating enthusiasts — or as Perry puts it, “lake boys” — first got the idea for Suction Up around four years ago.

There were no products like the Suction Up available on the market then, Perry said. They were inspired by wake shapers, a boating accessory that is suction cupped to the back end of a boat to change the direction of the wake and create a clean surf wave.

This gave them the idea to use two suction cups to hook two boats together, as opposed to using older methods such as buoys, ropes or inner tubes.

Cox assembled the first Suction Up prototype: a block of wood between two suction cups from the store.

 

“From that first prototype, we have come a long way,” Perry said.

They teamed up with the engineering department at Fresno State, and students in an engineering internship program helped develop some of the first prototypes for their senior project.

“We probably did over 50 lake trips just trying to prove the concept,” Perry said. “Unfortunately, we failed many times, and it’s been a challenging number of years to get where we are. It’s very humbling.”

The next step was to get involved with lawyers and start the process for a patent, which is fully completed by now.

The inventors say that the Suction Up is the first product of its type patented, but that there is another competitor making a similar product.

Because both Perry and Cox were raised in the Central Valley, they made it a point for the manufacturers and molders of every component of their product to be in the Fresno/Clovis area.

“We’re local, we make a local product and then we utilize other local businesses to mold it, and another to put it together, and then we ship it out,” Cox said.

To help meet the demand, Suction Up is working with another local company, Central Valley Assembly and Packaging, to assemble the product.

Perry said that having another company handle the assembly of Suction Up frees them up to focus on growing the business, but neither him nor Cox anticipated they would be this busy in the early stages of their venture.

Suction Up already has customers overseas, and all over the US, Perry said.

In the last two months, Suction Up has sold nearly 300 units, essentially selling out. Perry said if they had more in stock, they would have been selling thousands more. Each product retails for $399.99.

“It’s a quick efficient way to connect your boat, with family, and friends,” Perry said.

Most of the promotion for the Suction Up is done on Instagram (@_suctionup_), with one video garnering over 15 million views. The Instagram page currently has 24,000 followers.

Expansion of the product line remains a goal, Cox said, with a handful of new products that will align with the Suction Up expected to launch summer 2023.