An Iowa-based small business that makes toy race tracks is among the finalists in a contest to get international exposure through a retail giant’s website. Thousands of companies submitted entries to Walmart’s online competition called, “Get On The Shelf,” and the top 20 are now being featured in videos and voted upon by consumers.
BluTrack is based in Pella and spokesman Jeff Borland says the blue-colored track was created so kids could race their toy cars side-by-side and through whatever loop-the-loops they can dream up. “BluTrack is a highly flexible coil of toy race track, much like the Hot Wheels brands most of us had when we were kids,” Borland says. “Rather than being one single lane, it’s two lanes and they’re wider and coming in a single coil and being very flexible, it’s designed so that the end user can set it up in any fashion they can think.”
Borland, who operates out of the Quad Cities, says getting on Walmart.com would be a huge boost for the ten-year-old company. “We’re already on Amazon.com and in a lot of specialty stores,” Borland says. “Walmart.com is a competitor to Amazon.com. There’s so much more potential there. I could see (sales) doubling what we did last year and last year was our biggest year to date.”
Borland is an Independence native and grew up there with Randy Belding, who invented BluTrack for his son. Shortly after Borland invested in his friend’s business, he was told he was being mobilized to Afghanistan for a year, which presented some challenges to the fledgling company. Now a lieutenant colonel in the Iowa National Guard, Borland says it’s been rewarding to see the toy line expand from just an idea to a marketable product already being sold across the U.S. and in Canada.
He says winning this competition could propel BluTrack to the next level. “The website is all one word, GetOnTheShelf.walmart.com,” Borland says. “If you scroll down to the bottom, you can watch each individual video. At the top of the page is the whole 11- or 12-minute video. If you want to get straight to the voting, go down to the bottom of the page and you’ll see the four videos at the bottom and ours is at the far right.”
The voting ends on Thursday at 11 P.M. central time.
See the demonstration of the track here. getontheshelf.walmart.com/product/195b/BluTrack
