Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1179544
49 My DemerBox is still going strong almost eight years later. I have been following its creator, James Demer, and we finally met in September 2014 at the Maine Media Workshops in Rockport, Maine. At that time, James was living in Portland and I asked him to speak to my class on Sound Mixing. James made his living as a busy Reality, Documentary, News, and Feature mixer. James was always a tinkerer. "I built my first speaker out of a shoebox when I was twelve, and never lost the pas- sion. I was buying audio amplifier boards and putting them together with wood enclosures for speakers. One day, I took a Pelican 1300 case, cut some holes in it, and slapped a pair of Fostex three-inch drivers and tuned it up with a port and it sounded really good. A lot of my crewmember friends on the feature film I was on, Winter's Bone, asked, 'Oh, that's awesome, can you make one for me?' Being a bit of an entre- preneur, I thought what a great side hustle." James worked eleven seasons on Survivor and the crew- members would buy DemerBoxes. "They'd use them hard and break them, and then tell me what to fix. Then I'd come back with a new and improved model." James explains, "We launched a Kickstarter in the fall of 2014, and fulfilled the orders in the spring of 2015. Kickstarter allowed us the ability to open some injec- tion molds, which we had made in the US. We went from thermoforming our own cards with a homemade vacuum machine and a heat lamp to having real injection molded parts to hold the speakers, the circuit board, and the battery inside the box. James teamed up with Jayson Lobozzo, a cameraman, where they figured out the port plug addition that allows a user to put a plug in the porthole; you lose a little bass, but it's fully waterproof. The Kickstarter also allowed a new design where everything is incorporated in the lid and the elec- tronics are all protected. From an assembly standpoint, it's a lot easier to manufacture by attaching the lid to the case. James continues, "We started manufacturing in Portland, Maine, which is where I'm from. It started in my basement and then I rented a workshop in downtown Portland. Zac Brown of the Zac Brown Band had purchased a DemerBox late in 2016, and he sent me an email and asked, 'Hey, this thing's awesome. What are you guys doing? Why don't you come down to Georgia, I'll put some money into the opera- tion and we'll see what we can do.'" James moved in July 2017 to Peachtree City, Georgia, out- side of Atlanta, and set up shop. "Sales are very good, we grew sixteen hundred percent in 2018; it was pretty crazy. We had one order alone for four thousand units. Because we manufacture everything in the United States, we're very hands on with our product, we can customize for corporate clients. That four thousand unit order was for Jimmy John's Sandwich Shop's annual convention where they gave a DemerBox to each one of their store owners and managers." James posits, "We're partners with Zac Brown and Troy Link, an investor in DemerBox, who owns Jack Link's, a beef jerky company. Jack Link's is the largest packaged meats company in the world. They do $1.2 billion in revenue annually. So, between Zac's celebrity and his connections and Troy Link's guidance, I feel like we've hit the jackpot down here in Georgia." When it came time to find a new injection molding com- pany, they were able to find one a little bit closer to home from the one they used in Minnesota. There were four or five to choose from in Georgia. James explains, "We found one that's just up the road and get exceptional service. You just can't find that in Maine. The population's too small." Zac Brown of the Zac Brown Band and partner in DemerBox. Manufacturing the DemerBox