Physical therapist Steve Sudell, 37, became an accidental inventor when he found himself hunting for an effective at-home surgical neck traction device for patients at his physical therapy practice in Venice, Ca. He lived with neck pain from his college football career and knew how much it could affect patients’ quality of life.
One day, after he emerged from a workout with neck pain, he decided to address the gap in the marketplace himself. He set to work building a rough prototype of his own traction device from materials he had at hand. He created a sling-like device that hangs from a doorknob or railing and found that even in its rudimentary form, it gave him relief in 10 minutes.
That was in early 2016. Working on the idea with an industrial designer for a year a half, Sudell brought his product, the, to market in October 2017 while still running his physical therapy practice. He built the Neck Hammock business to $5-7 million in annual revenue and from a one-person operation with two contractors to a ten-employee business.
In January 2021, Sudell found that his hard work paid off. He was able to sell the business to private buyers for a seven-figure amount, amidst investors’ ongoing frenzy to buy online businesses. “I knew there were a lot of buyers in the market for e-commerce businesses,” he says. “I had eight offers the first day.”While selling the business was easy, building it while running a busy physical therapy practice took real determinatoin.