Two University of Georgia graduates created “Inactivators,” a redesigned sleeping mask aimed at improving sleep quality.
The company, The Inactive Company, was co-founded by Lori Oliver and Jill MacRae.
The Inactivators mask focuses on providing complete darkness to promote melatonin production and better sleep.
Two University of Georgia graduates have taken a common product – the sleeping mask – and reinvented it in a way to make it more comfortable, a better fit, and energize its purpose, which is a good night’s rest.
Lori Oliver, who grew up in Athens, and her business partner, Jill MacRae, formed The Inactive Company to produce and market the masks.
Their mask, called Inactivators, is already proving beneficial to athletes, who not only train hard, but need those hours of sleep to perform their best, according to Oliver.
“Athletes were among the first targets and first to get it,” Oliver said
They approached Ron Courson, the executive associate athletic director at UGA, and showed him their prototype mask before it was publicly marketed.Looking for a free mini puzzle? Play the USA TODAY Quick Cross now.
“Georgia was going to one of the playoff games and they bought our prototype. They have been a customer ever since,” Oliver said.
Since then, other college teams such as Clemson, Tennessee and Auburn, and NFL teams from the Atlanta Falcons to the Kansas City Chiefs have ordered Inactivators for their players.
Oliver said many people know sleep is important, but not many know how to prioritize it.
“High performers know that. People that have to use their bodies and their brains at a high level every day know the level of performance they can achieve starts the night before,” she said.
Oliver grew up in Athens, the daughter of UGA professor Ernie Bundschuh, who moved his family to Athens from Maryland in the 1970s to join what is now known as the Department of Kinesiology at UGA.
She was in the second grade at the time and over the years through her father she met many of the coaches and staff in the athletic department. Oliver’s mother, Haydee Bundschuh, was an administrator for the state health department.
After graduating Cedar Shoals High School in the class of 1980, Oliver went to Clemson for two years, but transferred to UGA where she earned a degree in journalism.
After college, she moved to Los Angeles, California, where she worked as a communications specialist for the company TRW, known for its national military defense and aerospace work with the government.
But it was with TRW that Oliver moved into a company section that created a start-up company to consolidate services in the residential real estate industry.UGA Sleep Study: UGA study: Lack of sleep disrupts key brain functions in adolescents
“I was on a marketing team for a startup that grew into $360 million in about three years,” she said. “That’s where I got my first taste of entrepreneurship.”
She married in Los Angeles to a police detective, but when that marriage ended in divorce, she moved back to Georgia, where she reunited with her high school sweetheart, David Oliver, a graduate of her collegiate rival Georgia Tech.
“We’ve been married for 31 years,” she said.
In Georgia, she began working with advertising agencies that worked with Coca-Cola, Home Depot, and the Olympic Games when they were held in Atlanta. With three children and turning 50, Oliver said she decided to become an entrepreneur. She created a line of clothing that brought her in contact with Sara Blakely, the founder of a company called SPANX Inc.
With experience in starting a business under her belt, Oliver went out on her own. Then the dark mask idea came to light.
“It was intriguing because I’ve been an insomniac myself. I struggled with sleep and what I realized was the sleep mask is this 100-year-old product that had never seen any innovation,” she said. “I looked at it from a product development standpoint and used some of my SPANX knowledge because we worked with so many technical fibers.”
She joined with Jill MacRae, who became friends from their days working with SPANX. MacRae, who lives in Atlanta, is a marketing executive who co-founded The Inactive Company with Oliver. She has an extensive marketing work history with numerous companies from Starbucks to Planet Hollywood.
The pair of businesswomen are now promoting a solution to improved sleeping.
“If you have complete darkness that will signal your body and brain to produce more melatonin so you sleep better, but these flimsy little masks on the market or the big heavy stiff ones didn’t allow people to get a complete blackout,” she said.
And from the research into a common product, “we created the performance sleep mask,” she said.