Thinking that only a crazy person would try to get into the smokeless tobacco business from a home-based company, some Akron-area entrepreneurs have chosen to dip into a bit different category: tobacco-free chew.

The product is racking up millions of dollars in sales for Fully Loaded Chew, which started on a kitchen counter but now ships to all 50 states, Canada and elsewhere from its 10,000-square-foot facility in Akron on Cuyahoga Street between North Howard Street and the Little Cuyahoga River.

"We did $2.6 million in sales last year," said Sean Linton, company president and co-founder, over a slightly bulging bottom lip.

Linton said he and friends from Green, Alan Duignan and Mike Crawford, were having beers and a dip — also known as chew, or smokeless tobacco such as Skoal or Copenhagen to the uninitiated — while watching the Browns at a bar in Portage Lakes in 2015.

Like most tobacco users, they started as teenagers and the habit stuck. They still enjoyed it, but as they got older they became concerned about potential health consequences. They tried a few of the tobacco-free alternatives on the market but found none that satisfied them like traditional dip.

"We just knew what we liked. They were Grizzly guys, and I was a Skoal guy," Linton said. Soon, they were in Linton's kitchen in Green, trying to mix up their own alternative using a variety of leaves other than tobacco in the mix and at the time using nicotine derived from tobacco.

"It was just a long period of trial and error," Linton said.

They finally settled on a mix that worked for them: leaves of spearmint and kudzu. They grind the leaves into tiny flakes, known as "long cut" in the world of dippers. They then add proprietary mixes of flavorings that include cayenne pepper and molasses, which Linton said also helps hold the mixture together. Next comes nicotine — or not, as Fully Loaded also offers a nicotine-free version.

Ultimately, they also chose to go with a tobacco-free nicotine, which is the same molecule made in a lab instead of from the leaves of a tobacco plant, so that their product is completely tobacco-free, Linton said. That wasn't easy, because the tobacco-free version costs 10 times as much, he said, holding a high-tech-looking silver container about the size of a large thermos containing a liter of highly concentrated nicotine that costs $5,000.

Once the partners found a formula they liked, they asked other people to try it, and they liked it, too. That included Ken Dawson, president of Akron's Eleventy Marketing Group.

He had hired Linton at InfoCision in Akron, where Dawson previously was chief marketing officer. Linton was director of business services. Dawson said he hired Linton at InfoCision after renting student housing near the University of Akron to Linton and being impressed with him.

Now he says he's impressed with Linton's product, enough that he's joined as a fourth partner and investor and is doing the company's marketing work.

"They came to me and they had this can. I think it was packed in another dip can, Skoal or something like that. So, I tried it and I liked it. And I said, 'Hey, it's got potential!' They said, 'Do you think we could make a product out of it, because people do really seem to like it?' I said, 'I think so,' " Dawson recalled.

Dawson had used smokeless tobacco before but didn't like the fact that it was a tobacco product and quit, he said. Now, he sometimes uses Fully Loaded, and he's becoming more convinced it will become big.

Last year, the company sold $2.6 million worth of product with various flavors and nicotine strengths, Linton said. Nearly all of that was done via direct sales, with 12 employees hand-packing each can in the Akron facility the company moved into last September. Fully Loaded ships 80,000 to 100,000 cans a month.

"We're FDA-approved as a facility," Linton said, adding that the process was not particularly cumbersome or expensive. The business still wrestles with labeling requirements, often erring on the side of caution, he said, and the company would face far more regulations and expenses if it were dealing with a tobacco product.

There have been setbacks. The company's introduction of a version of its product packed in individual pouches was delayed when its U.S. vendor failed to deliver a machine that could do the packing. Fully Loaded ultimately found a machine from a company in China that works and costs only 10% of the original equipment. Now, though, Fully Loaded has to get some of its money back from the first vendor.

But there have been some good surprises, too. For instance, the company discovered it gets great exposure with nontraditional advertising, especially via influencers on social media such as hunters, fishermen and other outdoorsmen with a lot of followers, Linton said.

"We can get a ton of exposure for $50 with the right influencer," he said.

There might be potential risks ahead, too. Linton said the partners keep a close eye on the burgeoning vaping industry and its regulatory landscape. They don't want to earn the ire of state governments or regulators the way vaping sometimes has with its popularity with minors.

To that end, Dawson and Linton said Fully Loaded Chew has hired a third- party authenticator to make sure its customers are of legal age to buy tobacco. It's also careful not to market itself as a smoking-cessation product or a healthier alternative to any tobacco product. Customers can decide for themselves if a tobacco-free dip has any advantages for them, Linton said.

It's in "the grayest of gray areas," though, Dawson said. For instance, should its product be taxed as tobacco is or should it escape such taxes?

That slowed down a deal with a major distributor that Linton and Dawson said would help break Fully Loaded into retail sales. Though, it was recently resolved to the distributor's satisfaction, they added.

Now, they hope Fully Loaded's products start appearing on store shelves this year. If that happens, they expect sales to go through the roof.

"We could probably do $25 million to $30 million under this roof … and we think we could hit that level this year," Linton said.

Dawson is more effusive in his optimism.

"We'll be in several thousand stores by the end of this year," he said, noting that some stores sell 1,000 cans of various smokeless tobacco a week.

With the U.S. market for the stuff at $4.2 billion in 2017 — up from $3.98 billion in 2016, according to the Federal Trade Commission — he thinks sales will explode.

"You grab a 1% or 2% market share and you're looking at a $150 million or $200 million business," Dawson said.