e2e Interview

 

Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur Interview

 

Phillip J. Chipping, President and Founder, ShieldZone and Eric Vaughn, Founder and CTO, VO Gloves

 

The following is a condensed transcript of a peer-to-peer conversation between two of Utah's entrepreneurs. Visit www.luminpublishing.com/GUV_podcasts/index.html to listen to or download an audio file of the interview as a podcast to your computer.

 

Eric Vaughn: I am the founder and CTO of Vaughn Outdoor and VO Gloves. I am a 27-year-old Utah native and I was fortunate enough to come up with an idea to put zippers on gloves and mittens allowing you to easily free your fingers without taking the gloves off.

Phillip Chipping: I am the founder and vice president of new business development for ShieldZone, which is home of the invisibleSHIELD — a thin transparent film that is ultra tough. You use it to protect your electronic devices. It wraps around your whole device offering screen protection and full body protection against scratches, wear and tear.

My first question for you Eric, is how did you think of the VO Glove idea? Did your glove fall off when you were on a ski lift?

Eric Vaughn: I did have a glove fall off a ski lift. I was up snowboarding and it was towards the end of the season so it was warm. Every time I would get on the lift, I would have to take off my gloves because my hands were so hot. You've had it probably happen too when you are on the lift and you have to take your gloves off to do whatever to get your cell phone, adjust your goggles or your gear and you either have to sit on your glove or put it under your arm.

I came up with the idea with the c-zip feature, which is a simple zipper across the back of the glove or mitten allowing you to unzip and pull your hand out. I got on a sewing machine and cut up some gloves to refine the design and made a pair that I could actually test out. Things took off from there.

So, Phillip, what is your background?

Phillip Chipping: I am a serial entrepreneur. I have to admit I am addicted. Unfortunately there is no AA for entrepreneurs so I think I'm going to be one for life. I have started at least 10 different businesses and some of them did OK and some bombed and have been through some real financial ups and downs over the last 10 years.

I have always had the philosophy that I want to be the guy in control of my future. I love education but I didn't feel like that was the place for me. I didn't want to get out and get stuck with a boss that was dictating my 3 percent increase per year potential. I was naturally drawn towards sales at a young age.

I see problems and my brain thinks of solutions. Recognizing a problem, a need or a want and then having that solution is how the invisibleSHIELD was started.

I received a new watch one Christmas and I didn't want the face to get scratched. I heard about this film that was developed for the U.S. military to protect helicopter blades. I knew a guy on the inside and so I secured some of the film. I cut it out by hand and it worked beautifully. I decided there was potential for a company to use the film to protect electronic devices. I started with a Web site, placed some ads and the company took off.

Eric, were you able to secure any intellectual properties on your idea?

Eric Vaughn: When I first came up with the idea, the very first thing that I did was I got on the computer and I Googled "convertible glove" or any sort of combination for what people might call what I wanted to do. Everyone has seen the hunter's mitten where the mitten part folds back onto your hand and you have your fingers out, but those were not necessarily made for snow.

I didn't see anything that was exactly like my design. The design we have is for gloves and mittens and you have to see it to understand how easy it is to pop your hand in and out. I also looked up the patent process. I started making phone calls. The first thing we had to do was have a patent search done.

Phillip Chipping: All of these things take money so did you have money in the bank?

Eric Vaughn: That is the leap of faith that I had to take. I was working for eBay at the time and I cashed out my stock options and used those to start the process. I registered the company as a Utah company and then I paid more than $1,000 for the patent search. The attorney felt comfortable that I would be able to move forward. I started paying him more money as he started doing what he needed to do.

Then I went over to a manufacturer in China. I was able to have them make an actual prototype glove. Once my parents saw a real glove, they recognized that their son wasn't completely crazy, so they invested the first amount of money that we needed to get up and going. I also had one friend that had a small amount of money to invest. I was able to quit eBay and focus on this full time, which was very beneficial in the long run. How about yourself?

Phillip Chipping: Very similar to yourself. I had to ask myself, "Do I want to gamble what I have here?"

I had just received a $5,000 tax refund and that was pretty much the total sum of life savings in my bank account up to that point. My wife and I had to sit down and really discuss and decide if we wanted to risk this. We felt that this was a good idea. We had done some local market tests and decided to go for it.

Luckily the invisibleSHIELD has been a hit since day one. We started marketing with a banner ad on geocaching.com because we thought the invisibleSHIELD would be the ultimate tough protection for handheld GPS units out in rough conditions that can scratch displays.

Eric, when did you decide to bring in help and in what capacities?

Eric Vaughn: At first I did everything myself but soon I was fortunate enough to find people who had contacts with other people having industry experience. When we started looking for our first big round of funding, it was not attractive to have myself be the president and CEO of the company. I recognized that I was inexperienced and young. Kent Holmberg came on as the president and CEO and luckily through him and some of his contacts we were able to bring our next stage of funding in.

It has definitely not been smooth sailing. It has its ups and downs but I have fixed on the goal the entire time. People react well to the gloves. I have customers tell me that they love my gloves and won't wear anything else.

Phillip, what efforts have you made so far in marketing and PR?

Phillip Chipping: We began the company very cautiously tracking every dollar. We wanted an immediate ROI on every dollar we were spending and the Internet was a great way to do that.

Then we met an independent PR person and she started talking to us about the importance of PR and the potential of PR.

As luck or fate would have it, this was just around the same time that Apple released the iPod nano in Spetember of 2005. It was hailed as this revolutionary cool new device, but everyone in the press complained that it scratched very easily.

Most manufacturers were still in R&D on their cases for the iPod nano and there was a three- or four-week period with nothing on the market except for our product.

So we sent out a press release and said, "Hey, we're ShieldZone. We have this product called the invisibleSHIELD. It is transparent. It protects the iPod from scratches. It's pretty cool. Check us out." The press release was picked up worldwide in the media and on high-profile blogs.

That was hands down the best day of our company because overnight we became recognized immediately within the iPod and Apple community as a player in the field.

That took us from being a small company and shipping out 10 to 20 shields per day to literally the next day shipping more than 500 shields per day worldwide.

Ever since then, we realized that marketing and PR are critical. I think PR is really important especially in the new media age. You still have your traditional media PR but it is so much more approachable on a beginning level with bloggers and podcasters. We always have a couple of people who are pitching our product to influential people on the Web.

But, it is one thing to try and get out there and get in front of people and tell them about the product, and it is another thing completely when they just come across the product in a store. Your product, Eric, would seem to me to be the ideal type of product to get into mass-market distribution. Tell me about that. Are you working on that?

Eric Vaughn: Eventually you may see us in mass-market distribution. For now, we have been trying to start out in the smaller area with the specialty stores to try and get a really good following in the ski and snowboarding communities. Eventually, we think the snow industry will be part of a larger business with many industrial uses. For now, we have focused on the snow industry because it is very visible and there is a lot of word-of-mouth advertising we get from skiers and snowboarders.

 

Launch - May/June 2007

 

 

For the full "digital magazine" version of May/June 2007, visit: http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/growutah/launch0507/