Fredericton-based Symbodi is the only Canadian company to make this year’s list of the 10 Most Innovative Companies in Wellness and Personal Care, as ranked by prestigious American business magazine Fast Company.

Incorporated in 2018 by Founder Curtis Kennedy, Synmbodi is best-known as the maker of the Vertiball, a portable back massager that requires no electricity and can be affixed to most walls. Its newer Vertigun device, a massage gun that is likewise wall-mountable and launched late last year, is the product offering highlighted by Fast Company.

Inspired by his experiences surviving a rare form of childhood cancer, Kennedy created Symbodi while he was a mechanical engineering student at the University of New Brunswick.

“At Symbodi we believe it’s the small (often overlooked) details in product design that have the ability to make the most fundamental difference in our daily lives,” wrote Kennedy on LinkedIn. “Our commitment to innovation continues to be driven by a shared passion for making products and technologies that help us feel our best, so we can be our best.”

Since its founding, the business has raised more than US$3 million, or just over C$4 million of equity funding from investors that include Arlene Dickinson’s District Ventures Capital and Halifax-based Tidal Venture Partners. It has sold its products to just under 250,000 people, and in 2022, was named to Deloitte Canada’s annual list of Companies To Watch, which uses a metrics-based approach to rank companies, with more than 3,000 percent sales growth over the preceding three years.