By Christine Fernando
A sea of yellow rally towels adorned with the words “terrible towel” in bold, black lettering flooded Mike Bostic’s television screen last Thanksgiving.
These “terrible towels” have become an emblem for Pittsburgh Steelers fans, but when Bostic looked to the other side of the arena, he realized Colts fans didn’t have a similar identifiable fan tradition, so he set out to change that.
He created the Rally Ring—a mash-up between a rally towel and a foam finger.
“We’ve seen foam fingers around since the ’70s,” said Bostic, a Carmel resident and wellness teacher at Forest Dale Elementary school. “This is a modern spin on it. It’s something new, something that hasn’t been done before.”
After realizing how expensive and difficult the process of getting NFL licensing for Rally Rings would be, Bostic and his business partners, Rob Lykins and Steve McNeely, decided to shift their focus.
Instead of a Colts fan product, the patent-pending, U.S. trademarked Rally Ring became an item targeted at high school and university teams.
Bostic said he hopes to break into the promotional market, which would allow teams to print logos of corporate sponsors on the back of Rally Rings and their own team logos on the front.
“It’s become our American dream to really get it out there into people’s hand so that they can enjoy them during games,” he said.
But the Rally Ring is not only limited to sports teams, Bostic said. Instead, he envisions them at concerts or even corporate product launches.
“It’d really work in any place where you have a lot of people and you want to create some fun and energy within a crowd,” he said.
Bostic said he is a teacher, not a businessman, but with his partners’ help he has learned more about starting a business every day.
With his growing business acumen, Bostic hopes Rally Rings will spread. One day, they might even be in stadiums and arenas around the world, he said.
“The sky’s the limit, and I’d love to see it take off,” Bostic said. “You have to dream big, and we have big dreams for this product. Hopefully, they will come to life.”
