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If you are in
the music business or play golf you are probably familiar with the SKB
brand of instrument cases and ruggedized golf bags. For 30-plus years Dave
Sanderson and Steve Kottman have been in the business of developing ideas
into marketable products. And for nine years, Omnica has been there to
help.
SKB is a
privately held, 50 million dollar a year company, located in Orange,
California. Their 160,000 square foot manufacturing facilities are located
here and in Mexicali, Mexico. In addition to instrument and golf cases,
SKB produces ribbed containers for the military and other industries. You
may have seen an SKB case featured in the movie “Cliff Hanger”.
Recently, OMNIview interviewed Sanderson, who recounted how he and Steve
got started.
The two have
known each other since college, and Dave refers to Steve as his best
buddy. In 1973 Dave was working at Knott’s Berry Farm when he was asked
to repair a case for one of the park musicians. He took it to Steve’s
garage and they fixed it with pop rivets. The repair went so well that the
two friends began building plywood cases for friends and local musicians.
Eventually they began selling them at music stores.
Some time
later, their largest music store customer, Doug Brown, suggested they
build a saxophone case using plastic instead of plywood. Dave used his
surfboard shaping experience to build the plaster mold. The team cobbled a
thermoform “machine” together from junk parts, including heating
elements from an old dish washer. The intake manifold from Dave’s 240-Z
was the vacuum source, so his car had to be running whenever they were
thermoforming. Doug was so impressed with the garage-built plastic sax
case that he offered his financial support in trade for consideration as a
partner. Brown became the “B” in the newly formed SKB Corp. The
partnership didn’t last long because that summer of 1978, after a fire
in Doug’s warehouse, the two original partners purchased Brown’s
interest. As it stands today, SKB is really “S” and “K”.
Steve and Dave
persevered and began making real money when they developed color-coded
microphone windscreens. With income from the foam windscreens they
purchased the parts to build a real thermoforming machine.
With the new
machine in place, SKB was able to produce and market four types of musical
instrument cases, so they approached Fender Musical Instruments for an
order. Even though the guitar maker initially laughed at their idea, they
offered SKB a list of what was wrong with their cases. The partners kept
returning with the suggested improvements until Fender ran out of reasons
not to purchasing the cases. Fender eventually became a customer.
According to Sanderson you don’t have to be smart, you just need
to stick to it. SKB now has 10 huge rotary thermo-formers that run around
the clock.
In addition to
thermoforming, many products in the SKB line are rotationally molded. “The
way we got into roto-molding was with Omnica,” said Dave.
"Seventeen years ago we had a ski case we built with complicated
aluminum tubes. The case had a lot of problems, it was hard to finish, it
was expensive, and it dented”. During a visit to Omnica, Earl (our VP of
Industrial Design) suggested rotational molding as an answer to their
problems. Earl’s advice solved the drawbacks inherent in the aluminum
cases, and the success of the process prompted its use with other
products. Rotational molding became such a large part of SKB’s business
that they purchased their own machines.
 OMNIview
asked why SKB doesn’t have their own engineers on staff. “When you are
developing a product,” Dave explained, “there are different processes
that have to happen, and you need a team. We can use Omnica whether it’s
something electronic or mechanical or even art department type work. You
have a whole collection of people with various talents, and when you
design a product like this (SKB’s audio speaker), you can call on any
one of a half dozen people for help”.
At left is the
sales sheet information for the "Spike" venue speaker. It's
rotationally-molded case features a special sound deadening material
sandwiched between two layers of polyethylene. It's very rugged and
scratch-resistant. You can learn more about SKB at www.skbcases.com
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