ST. LOUIS — For Conor Lewis, the sky is the limit when it comes to building forts.
He lost his job early in the pandemic in April of 2020. He could have never guessed that he would have a multimillion-dollar company less than a year later.
The father of two began his entrepreneur journey watching his daughter build a fort. He thought there had to be a better way, so he came up with the idea of a magnetic pillow fort.
Magnetic means the fort doesn’t fall down easily. He started to put the idea into action by watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasts to learn how to make the product and launch a business.
“We built Fort almost completely from money from my severance check from losing my job, selling my car – we only have one car now, which is interesting – and from Kickstarter,” said Lewis.
The success from the Kickstarter campaign was mind blowing to Conor. “Within 10 to 12 hours, we raised $2.2 million. We ultimately raised 3.1 over the course of 30 days from 10,000 people.”
Those who participated in the Kickstarter campaign will receive their magnetic pillow forts this summer. Everyone else can preorder on getthefort.com in May 2021 and will receive them this fall. Forts cost around $400. He says the forts are about the size of a dishwasher.
Fort has two other employees – his best friend and mother in law. Conor has big dreams for Fort: he would love to sell his product in Target.
For more information and to preorder in May, visit getthefort.com. You can also get signed up on the website to get notified when they launch.