There are a lot of impressive numbers in the Vertiball story, and perhaps the most impressive is 1,100.

That’s the number of units of its back-massage device that the Fredericton-based company has pre-sold before its official launch.

Vertiball is a portable, wall-mounted device that people can use to massage their back and reduce pain. It features a mounting device that fastens to a wall so users can position it at the perfect position to relieve their back pain.

Headed by 22-year-old CEO Curtis Kennedy, Vertiball is getting ready to produce its first batch of products, a 5,500-unit production run that should be ready to ship next month. The company will have to sell 4,300 to break even, and after a successful crowdfunding campaign, Kennedy and his gang are one-quarter of the way there.

Kennedy caught the entrepreneurship bug at University of New Brunswick, won a few competitions with the Vertiball idea, and produced 220 prototypes before he had a version he liked. He’s raised a total of $400,000 in non-dilutive funding. Then the three-member Vertiball team took the product through a Kickstarter campaign that raised $61,000 – more than seven times the target.

“I think I needed to do all that to learn, but for future projects I don’t think I’d do all that again,” Kennedy said in an interview in Fredericton, indicating there will be less trial-and-error going forward. He had just returned from a trip to Shenzhen, China, where he met with suppliers and partners in preparation for the production run.

Kennedy says that the various endeavors of the past two years – from producing 220 versions of the product to learning the complexities of a crowdfunding campaign – have provided a broad-based education in developing and selling physical products like Vertiball.

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As an entrepreneur, Kennedy falls into the gadgeteer camp – he obsesses over design and wants to learn about the manufacturing process. When the team did the Kickstarter campaign, he left the details to Vertiball Chief Marketing Officer Seth Barkhouse. But Kennedy and the whole team gained a huge understanding of how to market a new product and the benefits of a proper campaign.

The Kickstarter campaign resulted in distributers and retailers from as far away as Japan contacting the company, and these contacts should help them increase sales.

One thing that is obvious from an interview with Kennedy is that Vertiball is not going to be his last product. He’s already working on the next one and has learned that his own specialty is the design and production side of the venture. That’s why when his crowdfunding campaign ended, he took the time to go to Shenzhen, to the world’s manufacturing heartland, and learn as much as he could about manufacturing and logistics.

“It’s really good that everyone does what he’s best at, and I think my strength is on the creative side,” said Kennedy. “My dream is to start a multi-brand consumer products company here in New Brunswick.”