A few years after graduating from the Dalhousie University business management program, Mitchell Lesbirel and Casey Binkley are entrepreneurs with a product selling on the Canadian Costco website.

Lesbirel and Binkley are the co-founders of Axle Plastic Inc., a Toronto-based company that has produced FastRack Wine, a wine-bottle drying, transporting and storage system now being sold on Costco.ca.

The launch on Costco’s website is the latest chapter in an entrepreneurial saga that began at Dal, went through one of Canada’s leading entrepreneurship accelerators, and featured a successful pitch on Dragon’s Den.

“Costco recognized the early wine trend and began offering their Vino Europa wine kits,” FastBrewing said in a press release. “Now, it is branching into equipment with the FastRack Wine, which is ideal for cleaning, storing, and transporting wine and beer bottles.”

The FastBrewing story began when Lesbirel, a native of Oakfield, N.S., and Binkley linked up at Dalhousie.

In 2011, Lesbirel entered the Next36, a Toronto program that helps top-flight university students learn about entrepreneurship and growing their own businesses.  “Best program I ever did –hands down,” said Lesbirel in an interview when asked about the Next36.

Lesbirel gained a reputation for his persuasive personality at Next36. In fact, whenever the Next36’s Jon French visits Halifax he jokes about “Mitch the Pitch” wowing his classmates with his pitching abilities.

Originally, the two Dal grads formed the company to sell FastRack, the product featured on Costco’s website, to bars, restaurants in hotels. Lesbirel said lots of FastRacks were sold, but the homebrewing and winemaking markets are so much larger than hospitality that they switched their focus toward that market instead.

In April 2013, Lesbirel and Binkley appeared on CBC’s “Dragon’s Den,” in which start-ups ask influential businesspeople to invest in their company. Boston Pizza CEO Jim Treliving struck a deal for the duo’s FastRack product: $50,000 for a five percent royalty, having nine months without a royalty, and then dropping to a three-percent royalty after recovering his investment.

In the past two years, the duo has sold about 50,000 to 100,000 wine-racks and 15,000 fermenters.

Their products are in about 1,300 stores in more than 30 countries. Last month, the company launched its sales in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

 “We just developed trust in the industry—people know us,” Lesbirel said. “They know we deliver quality products.”

The FastBrewing products include a fermenter that can ferment beer in one container to avoid a mess; FastRack, which is a rack that holds empty beer and wine bottles to avoid a messy pile of empties at the end of the night; and FastLabel, which can customize beer, bomber and wine bottles.

 FastBrewing underwent 300 percent revenue growth in 2013-14, and Lesbirel said that the company expects another 300 percent revenue growth this year.

“It’s a very simple path,” Lesbirel said, “more product, more distribution.”