The phone call came out of the blue. Anna Barker, newly graduated from Mississippi State University and MSU Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach, shared the reins of the Starkville-based Glo with fellow grad Hagan Walker. They were on the ground floor of the startup based on a cool, glowing technology that appeared to have real potential,
At that point in 2017, “It was the two of us, with no employees, in a 700-square-foot office, just making right above the poverty line,” Barker recalled. The technology was first created in a classroom project at MSU, and Barker stepped up when their college friend decided not to pursue it post-graduation.
“Hagan was kind of seeing it used in drinks and in the entertainment, event and hospitality space,” Barker said, calling to mind lively cocktail parties and receptions where dressed-up guests clinked glasses that twinkled with glowing cubes.
Then the call came, from a mom determined to share her story. The mother sussed out their tiny, embossed business name on the Glo Cube she had taken home from an event and tracked them down. “Hey, I need you guys to know,” the caller began, sharing a story of her 4-year-old with autism who, with the Glo Cube, got into the bath for the first time without crying. “That may not sound like much to you two, making this for drinks, but you need to know that’s a part of our everyday routine, and that has meant a lot to us,” the caller said.
“It was just a pivotal moment for us,” Barker said, “because we were right there in those very early days.” The feedback sparked a longer conversation and lots of questions: Why didn’t he like the bath? Is this something other children with autism or sensory-processing disorders experience? Is it common? What about neurotypical children?
Ultimately, they wondered what the outcome could be if they made a kids’ line with this technology but went in the exact opposite direction.
“The reason the very early versions of the Glo Pals look so hand-drawn is because we had no designers, we had no employees, and I literally did draw them,” Barker said of the cute, liquid-activated cube-shaped characters. About six months later in early 2018, they launched Glo Pals at the trade show AmericasMart Atlanta, with no actual products but office-built and hand-cut stand-ins for the prototypes and packaging.
“We got all of our first customers there. We even met some big key players, like the Nordstroms of the world. … We launched it in the kids market, started shipping three months later, and now the entire company is completely functional,” Barker said. “We have 30 employees; we ship to over 48 countries; we’re carried in stores in all 50 states and in stores in over 20 countries and carried by national distributors. All of that revolves around the children’s industry, and we’ve now built an entire line of developmental-based, sensory-type play items, all from that one phone call.”
‘Our Story Is Attainable’
Barker, Go Pals co-founder and chief creative officer, was named on Inc.’s 2024 Female Founders 250 list of most intriguing women entrepreneurs this past April. “It was a total surprise to me, and also just so, so humbling, and hard to believe that I get to be associated with that group of women,” she said. “That is a little hard to wrap my head around.”
It is a long way from her small-town childhood in Monticello, Miss. Curiosity put her on this path, and her outlook-opening experience with MSU and its E-Center leadership supercharged it. That continued to fuel her creativity as Glo jumped into an industry they knew so little about. “I just am very, very driven by the things that I don’t know,” she said. Rather than hesitate around risk, Barker liked to jump in and explore, ”feeling like I could chase that spark of curiosity. I think that that was the most important thing for me.”
The Lawrence County native thought back to Glo Pals’ early days, and the way their eager, fresh-out-of-college perspective and ease with such a pivot worked to their advantage. “Because of starting this as students, we’ve always been so aware that we didn’t have all the answers and (that) we weren’t the smartest people in the room—the kind of hubris that you could develop after a decade or more in a career path,” Barker said. “There was some benefit to us not having that because we were always kind of in that listening/learning student mentality mode.”
With a chuckle, she admitted, “We were the least qualified people to be doing this.” Neither had kids. Neither had studied early childhood development. “(Yet), that is now what I spend every day doing,” she added.
Barker and her partner could not have known then how fortuitous the timing was, too. Less than two years after the launch of their children’s market, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down all hospitality and event-sales channels. “If you think about it, when we quit buying for ourselves, people keep buying for their kids—and their pets,” Barker said. “But you’ll start giving up on going to get your pedicure … going out to dinner. But people were still buying for their kids.” Many parents were also working from home, with children they needed to keep busy.
An early partnership with Sesame Street—which had introduced the Muppet Julia, its first character with autism, several years earlier—was key. Barker said their company’s small size and intentional care and consideration worked in their favor. “There we were, a year and a half into, still, dipping our toes into an industry that we had no experience in,” she said. “To have an industry leader with a multi-generational legacy be willing to work alongside us and let us learn from them, that is profound to have that so early in your career. I think we still feel the ripple effects of that and just the validation of it.” They now also work with PBS and “Daniel Tiger.”
As they moved into the kids market, Barker and Walker strove to hire working moms and dads and built in a lot of parental support for childcare, as well as maternity and paternity leave. “The benefit of it is that we made sure there were always parents in the room as these decisions and things were being made,” Barker said. “And what happened with that a lot of times, is that we would end up having kids in the office.” That helped, too. Glo Pals is based in the historic, redeveloped Rex Theater in Starkville, Miss., with other distribution warehouses in town. Barker moved to Birmingham, Ala., a little over a year ago but still drives to Starkville almost every week to assist in operations.
Barker can appreciate the example the business success and recognition can set, and motivation it can give for girls coming along behind her, particularly those from small towns in Mississippi for whom such dreams may not have been fostered. “We built this company and run this company out of our college town in Mississippi,” she said. “The majority of our workforce has lived in Mississippi. … Our story is attainable.”
“Knowing that is attainable—even if you weren’t already set up for that from the beginning and that hasn’t been reinforced from the start—I think that is incredibly important,” she added.
Though Barker is the first female founder from Mississippi to make Inc.’s Female Founders 250 list since its start in 2019, she immediately thought of others who should be there, such as computer engineer and entrepreneur Nashlie Sephus.
“We still have a little work to do on shining a light on not only entrepreneurship, innovation and general talent in the state, but even more specifically, the women behind that innovation and talent in the state of Mississippi,” Barker said.
Learn more about Glo Pals at glopals.com.
Know a person you believe deserves some public recognition? Nominate them for a potential Person of the Day article at mfp.ms/pod.
