If the thought of bats gives you the creeps or makes you think of nothing but Halloween and scary movies, two young entrepreneurs are out to change that thinking and hang those misconceptions upside down.
Harrison Broadhurst and Christopher Rännefors are creating bat houses — a bed-and-ideally-breakfast arrangement for bats, if you will. The business partners call the product BatBnB, for the nocturnal mammals that help cut down the population of mosquitoes and garden bugs.
“We were both entering the second half of our 20s, thinking about starting families, and we were also at the age to travel a lot before you settle down and have kids,” Rännefors said. This was in the spring of 2016, when mosquitoes were big news, as the Zika virus, transmitted by mosquito bites, was a legitimate danger for travelers. Rännefors has extended family in Sweden, and he wondered if there were any new products putting people at ease.
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“What we noticed on the market was a lot of chemicals and pesticides that ruin the local wildlife just to get rid of mosquitoes,” Rännefors said. “We said, ‘We don’t love that idea.’”
Further research on mosquito protection led the entrepreneurs-to-be to bats. “A single bat will eat up thousands of mosquitoes and insects in a single night,” Rännefors said. He’s quick to point out that bats are not the definitive solution for Zika, but a “great, natural, sustainable form to control mosquitoes.”
When they looked at bat houses for sale, Broadhurst and Rännefors found most of the models to be poorly designed, and almost all were ugly. They knew they could design units that were more aesthetically pleasing. They formed Point Line Plane, LLC last year. While keeping their day jobs, they are spending evenings and weekends building BatBnB prototypes and seeking advice from bat proponents across the country (including one conservationist who is “the Beyoncé of the bat world,” according to Rännefors). Working with Lexington’s Parks & Recreation Department, there’s a BatBnB prototype currently installed at McConnell Springs.
“The iterative design process was great for us,” Broadhurst said, “because we quickly had loads of ideas and lots and lots of questions, so the only way to get those ideas out and answer those questions was to start testing.”
Broadhurst is a project coordinator at Nomi Design, a local architecture and fabrication firm. He has a degree in architecture from the University of Kentucky. Rännefors is a director of customer success at the tech firm MakeTime; he has a degree in commerce from the University of Virginia. Their respective employers have been supportive of the BatBnB side business, making space and equipment available from time to time.
Broadhurst said he and Rännefors are striving to “design bat houses that ideally meet the needs of the bat inhabitants, and furthermore, meet the functional and aesthetic needs of the consumer.” He is excited to be part of a project that is helping to save bats and allowing people to get outdoors to enjoy their backyards without the annoyance of insects.
“They’re not your pets,” Rännefors said, of bats. “Respect them as natural wildlife.” BatBnB is providing bats with a nice home of their own without inviting them into your own house or building.
Bat populations are dwindling across the state, nation and world, in part because of a hibernation disruption called white-nose syndrome. These mammals are friends to farmers and gardeners who prefer a natural, nonchemical alternative to pesticides.
“We want to give bats a rebrand here,” Rännefors said. “We want this product to be something beautiful; something you’ll want to display proudly in your yard or barn and say, ‘That’s my BatBnB.’”
For production and manufacturing capital, the BatBnB duo chose the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. With a July 26 launch, the Lexington designers are promising a Christmas delivery of a bat house for the earliest backers and spring 2018 for all other BatBnB preorders. They also plan to donate a portion of proceeds to nonprofits. As for the Point Line Plane parent company for their side business, the partners are excited about the future and are already “formulating plans for several products that continue to explore the intersection of people and wildlife and how we can live together in mutual benefit,” according to Broadhurst.
“That’s the thematic principle we founded our side business on,” Rännefors said, “finding a sustainable solution where people and animals can live together in mutual benefit.”
For more information on the technical specs of the BatBnB bat houses and myths about bats, visit www.batbnb.com.