About the business: Little Burros produces the Little Burro and Burro Buddy, both of which are meant to simplify and organize the gardening experience. The products — sourced with American materials and produced in an Ohio factory — will soon land on the shelves of some 2,500 Lowe’s Home Improvement and Walmart stores, after years of largely online sales, in addition to a select few brick-and-mortar outlets.
How it started: Mollie Thorsen, the Alexandria company’s chief operating officer, has probably told this story a million times — in pitches to big-box retailers, on “Shark Tank,” to the press. In 2013, while doing yard work, her mother accidentally raked her cell phone into a lawn bag. Why was it on the ground in the first place? There was no place to keep it.
Bob Thorsen of Alexandria’s Thorsen Construction, Mollie’s father, heard this and went to work. “Bob the Builder,” as they call him, fashioned a tray out of cardboard and duct tape to sit on his wife’s wheelbarrow.
A…
Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.
