The Boy With The Golden Ticket

Story by Laura Jackson
From WVU Today,

Logan Cuvo is many things — a Mountaineer, an entrepreneur, a visionary and a CEO. But if you ask him, he’ll tell you, simply, that he’s blessed.

The senior from Columbus, Ohio, is an entrepreneurship and innovation major at the West Virginia University John Chambers College of Business. He’s also the founder and leader of Best Dam Tape, a company born of his love of hockey and his desire to improve the performance of athletic tape, which hockey players use both on their sticks and around safety equipment like shin pads. It’s even used by NHL teams the Anaheim Ducks, Philadelphia Flyers and Winnipeg Jets.

The idea of tackling the sports tape industry and creating a better product came to him before he arrived at WVU. After a young lifetime of playing hockey, he was hoping to continue that path in college.

“But I realized I wasn’t good enough to play college hockey,” he said. “It was a hard thing for me to process, to understand that it wasn’t going to be my future. I didn’t know what I was going to do, and I was really stressed. And then I came up with the idea for Best Dam Tape. I thought, ‘Why don’t I disrupt the legacy tape market that’s been in place since I was a little kid?’”

With the dream gelling, he needed an environment where both it and he could flourish. Thanks to the University’s Ohio Tuition Reciprocity Agreement, the Chambers College became the place that would open doors of opportunity, many times, for Cuvo and his fledgling company.

Springboard To Success

At WVU, Best Dam Tape grew quickly from an idea to a reality. At first, Cuvo ran the operation from his dorm room, but the trajectory changed when Ryan Angus, associate professor and James Coffman Fellow in Entrepreneurial Studies and Management and the director of Vantage Ventures, approached him to join the first cohort of Vantage business students.

“Ryan Angus told me, ‘You can get paid to work on your company.’ I thought that couldn’t be true. But that conversation changed my life.”

The Vantage Ventures Program is a 13-week acceleration initiative begun by John Chambers, a WVU alum and former CEO of Cisco, that gives students resources, mentoring and funding to launch startups like Best Dam Tape. Those who are accepted receive up to $10,000 in funding, access to workspace in Reynolds Hall and a path to more funding — as many as six figures — as they develop their business.

“Vantage Ventures was the right choice for Logan and Best Dam Tape because we were able to provide him with guidance, advice and funding in the critical early stages of his business,” Angus said. “We helped him increase its profitability and develop his pitching skills, which he has since translated into great financial success at multiple pitch competitions across the country.”

West Virginians have an uphill battle when it comes to business — the state ranks at the bottom of the national list for entrepreneurial enterprise. Cuvo, however, was undeterred. Rather, it was a challenge, and with help from his advisers, he found himself forging ahead, determined to beat the odds.

He did.

“Vantage Ventures legitimized my business,” Cuvo said. “It made me understand what it actually takes to be a business owner. It’s not just selling your product — it’s so much deeper than that. After Vantage Ventures, we blew up, and it’s been better than I could have imagined in my wildest dreams.”

In addition to Vantage Ventures, entrepreneurial students can take advantage of additional WVU resources to push their ideas forward, like the Morris L. Hayhurst LaunchLab and the Lane Innovation Hub. Both programs help turn ideas into reality with support for business development and manufacturing.

Help comes from beyond the University community, as well.

“Thanks to our generous donors, we have been able to provide substantial cash funding to our hardest working, most promising entrepreneurship students,” Angus said. “West Virginia desperately needs more entrepreneurs like Logan. I hope his success will inspire others to take the leap and pursue their dreams in the Mountain State.”

Big Stage, Big Wins.

Best Dam Tape was already finding success when Cuvo got an invitation to participate in an annual entrepreneurial event that offers small businesses a chance to pitch products for Walmart and Sam’s Club. He didn’t hesitate.

“I drove six hours with my Nana to pitch for 45 minutes,” he said. “They treated me like family from the first moment.” His pitch struck a chord with event organizers, who invited him to the next phase — Walmart’s Open Call in Arkansas, where 700 other small businesses hoped to receive a “golden ticket” and a place on the shelves. Around 100 businesses won a ticket, including Best Dam Tape. Three of those were offered a chance to pitch to the whole auditorium — two alums of the entrepreneurial reality television show “Shark Tank” and Cuvo.

A crew from a documentary series even featured Cuvo’s time at Open Call and followed him through the event. He’ll also be profiled in a subsequent documentary, for which the crew will be visiting him in Morgantown.

The magnitude of the experience in Arkansas continues to strike him.

“I was the youngest founder there,” he said. “The only college student, pitching to Walmart in front of 700 entrepreneurs. When I got the golden ticket, everything after that was a blur — 15 media interviews, documentaries, all of it.”

Critical Collaborations

In addition to the Anaheim Ducks, Philadelphia Flyers and Winnipeg Jets, Cuvo works with dozens of NCAA teams, including Arizona State, Ohio State and Princeton University, which use Best Dam Tape. It’s in every professional league across North America, the American Hockey League and the EHCL, a minor league and farm system to the AHL and NHL.

He hopes Best Dam Tape will move well beyond hockey, and is working locally with WVU football, soccer and combat sports to benefit Mountaineer athletes.

“I want the company to be synonymous with a Nike or a Red Bull. Nobody’s done that in the tape industry.”

These aspirations, however, become reality through a daily grind. When he’s not pitching or giving interviews, Cuvo’s working — on finishing his senior year and on his dream. WVU and Vantage have given him the groundwork and the support he needs, but the everyday practice of developing, running and growing a business comes from experience.

Fortunately, his family is beside him. His mother is his chief operating officer, while his father is the “strategy guy,” always at the ready when his son needs help or support. And as the company grows, so does the Best Dam Tape team. In addition to working with a chemical engineer and manufacturer, Cuvo has hired a skilled group of workers and advisers, including Fortune 10 strategists, WVU faculty and alumni.

He credits WVU and Chambers College for helping him map the road to success.

“I’ve been in rooms with people I could never have imagined,” he said. “Chambers, the classes and the entrepreneurship ecosystem here — it allowed me to connect with a lot of people within the business college, the state and WVU. It’s a dream come true. It’s as simple as that.”

See more from WVU, Today