Blake Chance was bailing hay a couple years ago on his farm in tiny Mayetta, Kansas, when he nearly met with a fiery disaster.
Blake Chance, Bar C Innovations founder
“The baler got a little hot and we were lucky it didn’t burn up,” Chance told the 4thEst8, adding that if a farmer with a burning bailer can’t disconnect it from the tractor, they could lose the tractor too. With tension on a traditional top-loaded hitch pin a farmer may not be able to pull it out. The Quick-Pin hitch pin loads from the bottom. “You take this top sleeve off this pin, and then you get up in the tractor and you release the (hydraulic) pressure.”
Then the pin drops out as the farmer drives away with the tractor. It’s simple, and fast.
Chance adds that while fire is the main reason a farmer would want this, it also makes the daily coupling of equipment much easier and faster. After identifying the problem and designing the solution, the young farmer started building his new business. He took an entrepreneurship class at K-State, wrote up a business plan and entered his idea into a competition there.
IP and Manufacturing:
“I took that business plan to K-State Launch, which is like a Shark Tank deal… and won some money there and got my patent pending,” Chance said. “Then I couldn’t find anybody to make them for me, so I kind of thought I was dead in the water. But finally, we knew somebody, and we made it happen. He’s only 20 minutes away. He makes them in Topeka, and it all worked out.”
The $1500 win and inclusion in the 2019 cohort of K-State Launch got him to incorporate in the early spring of 2020, and most of the money went to a patent lawyer. (The patent is filed and pending.) Chance originally expected to go to farm trade shows, but COVID lock-down changed that.
Sales:
“I kind of launched right in COVID, so I didn’t have any other plans, or I wasn’t able to do anything else… so I decided to roll with it,” he said. He launched a website. “I’ve got a pretty good social media presence on Instagram, and I’ve also used Facebook and TikTok… local farm stores, too, they’ve been selling for me… I’ve got probably 12 or 15 dealers throughout the United States… but mainly online stuff – so I’ve been selling them.”
Quick-Pin hitch pin
The handful of independent dealers are mostly in Kansas, with a couple in Oklahoma and Tennessee. In the past 10 months Chance says he’s sold 1000 Quick-Pins. He’s approached some of the larger distributors, but is told that having such a limited product line is unattractive – so he’s developing other items.
What’s next?
“I’m working on some bigger designs for the big-time farmers,” he said, noting that his work is still from the farm. “I do everything out of our shed; our shop and everything. So it’s not much of a headquarters, but it works.”
After some ideation and business formation Bar C Innovations was incorporated in April 2020. It has one employee, Chance, and is headquartered from his farm near Mayetta, KS.
