How One Entrepreneur Turned a Dance Trend Into a Glowing EmpireBrian Lim went to an electronic dance music club six years ago and was inspired to launch a line of rave accessories.

Brian Lim preferred dancing in the dark. That's how he is -- modest, soft-spoken, definitely not showy. But at an electronic dance music (EDM) club six years ago, his girlfriend nudged him to don a pair of gloves with fingertips covered in blinking LED lights. It's the sole tool required for "gloving," a dance in which lit-up hands create light-streaked spectacles for (possibly but not exclusively intoxicated) onlookers. "I was able to captivate a small crowd around me," Lim says. "It was a feeling I'd never had before."

这也是the inspiration for what would become Emazing Group, Lim's fast-growing empire of rave accessories. It did $7 million in sales in 2014 and $12 million last year, and is on track for $18 million this year. But his company started much more modestly, with a hunch: This subculture had a popular product but no go-to brand.

Lim tested the market shortly after his night at the club. He paid an electronics hobbyist $100 to affix keychain lights onto white gloves, then sold them under the name Emazing Lights through Craigslist and eBay. Sales were brisk. To build attention, he started a weekly glover meet-up at his local In-N-Out burger in Baldwin Park, Calif. Ten or so people came at first, but attendance soon grew to the hundreds. "We got run out by the cops at least three times," says Lim. "We had to go parking-lot hopping."