
They applied for a patent on the same weekend that they got married and launched Steller Floors in 2018.įrom there, Teller said that they did everything backwards. Teller was working on her PhD in plant science and soon caught the wood products bug as they invented their Steller product: wood flooring that clicks together to form a floating floor, requiring no special installation and, best of all, can be uninstalled and removed to be used again and again. They spent a lot of time looking at malfunctioning hardwood floors in people’s homes and realized the need for a product that worked with wood’s natural properties, not against it. Stover’s father had spent his career in wood products and Stover joined him in the industry when they started a consulting company. The company started when husband-and-wife team Evan Stover and Britta Teller met as biology students in college.

The backwards business plan: A video, a wedding and a patent The possible sale to provide flooring in that building would be momentous, but that's something that Steller Floors is pretty good at doing. “I need a minute,” she said with a laugh as she hung up the phone. They peppered her with questions about Steller Floors’ patented floating floor system along with its sustainability and durability, and Teller delivered.

Our interview couldn’t start until Teller got off an unscheduled phone call with architects who were calling her from one of the most famous buildings in New York City. And we’re watching that work pay off.”Īs it turned out, I’d missed out on the earlier torrential downpour, but got a front row seat to a meteoric event of another kind. “We asked ourselves, ‘How do you make a difference? How do you make sure the place you live is good?’ You have to invest in it. When a freakish rainstorm forced me to cancel, Steller co-founder Britta Teller graciously offered to host HappyValley Industry a few weeks later.
Stellar floors and decor drivers#
In case you missed it (which I did, I’ll get to that in a minute), it was attended by both local economic development drivers like the Ben Franklin Technology Partners team and state leaders like Senator Judy Ward, Representative Jim Gregory and DCED Deputy Directors Steven D’ettorre and Richard Vilello. I was invited to a press day at Steller at the end of March.

This is the story of Steller Floors in Tyrone. It’s another story altogether when that company is fully vested in its vision and in its community and has no intention of going anywhere but up. In many instances, this kind of startup, flush with success, is perfectly positioned for a venture capitalist or an angel investor to help grow the company and get it ready to sell. What happens when an idea turns into an actual product and that product goes super-viral on YouTube? And then - in the middle of COVID - that product defies all odds and hits $1M in sales after only 24 months in existence?
