Estimated read time: 7-8 minutes
HILLDALE — Stacy Stubbs sat in his hotel room in the spring of 2022, exhausted after a long day at a trade show putting his invention in front of influential people. He was down to his last dollars, hoping his new invention would gain some traction.
In an effort to numb his mind before going to sleep, he did a quick scroll through TikTok and noticed an icon to create a new account.
"Stickerburrroller," is what he typed in. He waited to see if the account name was available. It was.
What's a new account without content, he thought? So, he searched through his phone to find a video to upload. Stubbs found an 11-second video he had of his product, deemed the Sticker Burr Roller, rolling along a sticker-infested piece of dirt and picking up sticker burrs with every rotation.
"I posted it and by that evening, I had 2,000 likes — and then 10,000 by 1:30 in the morning," Stubbs recalled. "I told myself to just go to sleep. … I woke up in the morning and it was up to 1.5 million ... and then 3 million, and within 72 hours it was up to 10 million views."
Views are one thing, sales are another. Within a week, he had 800 orders he had to fill with his little invention that could.
'Devil spurs'
A couple of years prior, Stubbs had moved into a new home that was, unfortunately, infested with sticker burrs, sometimes called goatheads, puncturevine or sandspurs. He said getting rid of these pokey seeds quickly became an obsession.
"Without fail, I would step on one every time I walked in the house without shoes," he wrote in a Facebook post. "After about six months, I really got frustrated and seriously decided that I was going to go do something about it. I went and found my weed burner propane torch and I decided that I was going to cook those suckers clear gone. I spent a couple days burning them until they were bright red. I wanted to make sure they never came back. After burning through a full tank with my flame thrower, I decided to shop vacuum the whole yard. But after days of vacuuming and filling garbage cans with sand and stickers, I decided I would be doing this job for weeks. I was really desperate and I also came to the realization that it could take weeks."
Having grown up with a father whom Stubbs described as a "natural inventor," he knew just who to call to help him create something to rid him of the "devil spurs."
"For about two to three weeks, we went to junkyards, we went to the store, we gathered just about everything you could possibly think of," Stubbs recalled. "We tore apart lawn mowers and tried to create frames and push handles and rollers by cutting pipes up. We tried cables and all kinds of things. Besides that, we would brainstorm and sit there for hours and talk. We ended up building a roller, and that thing was bulletproof and overengineered. It was so complicated and it worked great, but we knew there was just no way I could mass produce this."
Over the next several months, Stubbs said he looked everywhere for products to make the roller scalable.
"I remember walking everywhere, and I would just wonder if that would work, or if this would work," he recalled. "I was just walking through Walmart in their exercise section and I found some back rollers that were made out of foam, and I thought they were perfect. I saved up my money and I bought that, a little drywall mud pan, and just enough window screen from the hardware store. … I then cobbled up a plastic PVC model frame thing together … and it worked! It still wasn't perfect, but it worked."
A reason to heal himself
His obsession with creating a perfected scalable product to heal the world of sticker burrs came at a time when he was at one of his lowest points, mentally. After years of alcohol abuse, his marriage was failing. He was 50 years old and still "pushing a shovel" working construction, and life looked dim.
"I remember wondering if it was possible that I could come up with something that I could take care of my family with — that would be like the American dream," Stubbs said. "I got really depressed, and I realized that there were some things in my life that I needed to do differently. The first decision I made was to let go of my alcohol addiction, and that was a really difficult decision for me."
Stubbs spoke about hitting a rock bottom, where he wasn't sure if life was worth living anymore, but said he turned to journaling and finding a way to love himself again.
"I went back and I journaled and I just learned how to sit with my pain," he said. "After my one-year anniversary for sobriety, I decided I was gonna do something that was big."
Stubbs took himself on a "honeymoon."
"It helped me because I showed up for myself at such a high level, that I felt worthy enough that I could follow my dream," he said.
Perfecting the Sticker Burr Roller
At over 50 years old and a year of sobriety, a new man began to emerge.
Stubbs said things started to fall into place with his Sticker Burr Roller, and he was being connected with people who could help him build it. The only problem he had was he had no income.
He had just quit his job as a construction worker. He had only his dream to drive him and people who believed in that dream to put him in places to realize it. A series of people and events put him on a path to create a finished model he felt confident to share. And in the spring of 2022, he was invited to show his roller at the National Hardware Show in Las Vegas, where he could put his American dream to the test.
"It scared the crap out of me and I was like, 'I'm not even ready. I don't have a website. I don't have pamphlets. I don't have banners,'" he said. "I didn't have anything, and I had 30 days to figure it out on zero money."
In another series of events that could be described as miraculous, Stubbs was able to make it to the show and get the roller in front of people of influence. Little did he know, however, it would be his own influence, by way of an 11-second video on TikTok, that would take his invention to the next level.
Saving the world one Sticker Burr Roller at a time
After a whirlwind several months, when he had to find ways to mass produce his new invention — that included enlisting the help of his mother and her friends to hand-sew pieces together — Stubbs said the storm has settled and he can now reap the benefits of his trials.
He spoke about traveling the country, helping to rid areas of sticker burrs. A beach in Florida was infested with burrs that were causing the decline in population of a rare species of bird, and Stubbs was commissioned to help clean the area. He said he traveled to a high school where a baseball field had been covered in the noxious seeds, often injuring players. There are several more stories Stubbs shared, but one of the things he said he is most proud of is providing jobs for many Americans in rural communities.
"Overall, there's probably 50 families that we're feeding right now, that this thing supports — 50 American families that is," he said. "It's amazing how it adds up and how it spreads out and helps the economy."
To date, Stubbs said he has sold about 10,000 of his Sticker Burr Rollers and is currently working on creating a bigger roller to clear larger areas. To learn more, go to stickerburrroller.com.
