“Vacuum insulation as a technology is not particularly new; the thermos is 100 years old,” Beckham said. “But it’s always been focused on keeping things hot. Recently, people have realized that it wasn’t being utilized as widely as it could be, and it would be great for keeping things cold. We saw that early on, and it’s worked out great for us. We picked this product because we had seen the success of other companies in this area and we were fans of the technology. Our chief product officer, Micah Ames, had a lot of ideas about how we could improve on what was already in the market.”
While he knew the potential was there, the Norman-based company’s amazingly rapid growth has surprised everyone, himself included, Beckham said. Since its beginning in 2015, Simple Modern has doubled its revenue every year.
“We started manufacturing in December 2015, for selling our products on Amazon,” he said. “The first wave of business hit in March of 2016. We were on our way and immediately a hit.”
Spearheading this type of enterprise was a significant change of pace for Beckham, who created a very successful e-commerce business with his brother in 2009 and spent almost a decade before that working with a nonprofit ministry.