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Southern Beaufort County's Daily Newspaper |
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Kazoo entertainer turns manufacturer
If necessity is, indeed, the mother of
invention, then Rick Hubbard could be called the father of
self-fulfillment.
Famous for his family brand of entertainment that encourages children
to join him onstage as part of his trademark kazoo band, the Hilton Head
Island resident and noted entertainer has added the moniker of
industrialist to his resume.
Since last summer, he and three full-time employees have been producing
what Hubbard claims is at least half of the nation's supply of plastic
kazoos from the back of an airplane hangar on Hilton Head.
"This year we're probably going to do about half a million kazoos,"
says Hubbard.
Last August, Hubbard purchased one of the country's two major kazoo
factories from a company in Detroit named Med-Tek for $215,000. It only
made good business sense because Hubbard, in handing out kazoos at his
200-plus performances across the United States each year, represented
about one-third of the Detroit company's annual sales volume.
"We just kept buying more and more for my shows. At the peak, I was
buying 75,000 kazoos a year," Hubbard says, explaining he then passed the
cost on to the venues that booked him. He was buying so many, in fact,
that he also became a retailer of the musical instruments. "Over the
course of the eight years I had been doing business as a kazoo distributor
and, between my shows and Web site sales, we had become about 30 percent
of the kazoo manufacturer's overall yearly volume."
Actually, Hubbard kind of fell into the business enterprise he now
heads that carries the name Kazoobie Kazoos. "Kazoobie" is a word Hubbard
says he invented to use in his show that means an exceptional, fun time.
He recalls that when the Internet became popular, he found, somewhat
incredibly, no one owned the domain name Kazoos.com. So he registered it and
established a Web site to promote his show. Because the word "kazoo" was
so numerous on his pages, early search engines would direct Web surfers to
his site.
"I was the No. 1 hit if you entered the word kazoos and, consequently,
people started e-mailing me, asking me where to get kazoos for their
parties, church events, civic events," recalls Hubbard. "I put up a page
on my Web site saying, 'If you need kazoos, I buy so many a year, I'll box
them up and sell them to you' and I started getting checks in the mail."
Hubbard also had arranged a pretty sweet deal for himself. Island
Postal Center on Palmetto Road had rented him a small office, where he
kept his inventory of kazoos. Because he was on the road much of the time,
when he received an order, he would fax the information to the people at
Island Postal Center, who would box up the order and mail it for him.
"I was running the whole thing out of my back pocket with a cell phone
and a laptop," he says. "But I never imagined it would get so busy. I
remember being ready to step on the stage at a festival and being on my
phone and closing a deal on 5,000 kazoos."
A couple of years ago, Hubbard decided to expand the fledgling business
and offered his road assistant, Stephen Murray, a job selling kazoos
full-time. He set him up in a small office with the inventory, a computer,
a telephone and an 800-number, and upgraded the Web site with credit card
processing and a secure server. Murray is now the company's director of
operations, supervising production and most aspects of the business with
Hubbard still on the road much of the time.
"When he started answering the 800-number on a 9 to 5 basis and
responding to e-mails immediately, my sales went up 40 percent," Hubbard
says. "We were selling more than I ever thought possible."
The business soon outgrew the tiny office and, while driving around one
day, Hubbard and Murray just happened to see a "For Rent" sign in the back
of an airplane hangar, nestled among the trees on the back of Hilton Head
Airport's general aviation site. The space was perfect because the owner
of the hangar, Dr. Jack Hickham, an orthodontist, had used the back of the
hangar to develop and manufacture a small orthodontical plastic device. An
air compressor and air lines running through the walls already existed, as
well as custom tables to accommodate shipping and other endeavors.
Airplanes still share the hangar, divided by a wall.
The kazoos Hubbard manufactures are injection-molded using higher
grades of plastic than the company's foreign competition uses, Hubbard
claims. Med-Tek, which produces various products, still keeps the mold
Hubbard purchased for $65,000 on its premises.
"The demand for kazoos is not such that you need a full-time
injection-molding plant running 24 hours a day and plastic
injection-molding is messy and complicated so we pay them to create the
parts for us. They can output 100,000 kazoo parts in three days," says
Hubbard, adding the company has investigated moving the production to
South Carolina but, thus far, has not found anyone with the right
machinery or the know-how.
The parts are shipped to the Hilton Head site, where employees assemble
the parts and affix a hot dye stamp using foil. Most other companies,
Hubbard says, use silk-screening, which he tabs an inferior process.
Using 12 colors, employees are able to mix and match the bodies and
caps of the kazoos to create corporate and team colors. One consistently
big seller is a blue kazoo with a yellow cap that is purchased by Cub
Scout groups.
"You'd be astounded at the orders we get," Hubbard says. "We've sold
kazoos to the military. I have a guy in California at a top-secret
installation out there. All he could tell me was they monitor the
perimeter of a very intense building they work in. So he bought a whole
bunch of kazoos and every morning or afternoon, they get a break and they
go out and tell jokes and play songs together and just break the tension
of the fairly stressful jobs they have.
"I have a prison warden in Indiana who buys kazoos because be can't get
the prisoners to sing, but he can get them to play kazoos."
As Hubbard is relating the stories, Murray sticks his head in the
office and says Microsoft just called requesting kazoos with lanyards.
"Microsoft, huh?" says Hubbard, lifting his eyebrows. "Nice timing," he
smirks, acknowledging the interview he's participating in.
"I didn't set that up!" swears Murray, closing the door.
Because Kazoobie Kazoos is wholesaler and retailer, Hubbard says
middlemen have been cut out, thus lowering the cost. Depending on the
volume ordered, Kazoos can be bought for 30 cents a piece. On the other
hand, a metal, gold-plated kazoo that comes in a custom-made walnut box
with glass sells for $35. It's a favorite gift for executives, Hubbard
says.
Surprisingly, Hubbard says the biggest seller -- more popular than a
Happy Birthday kazoo -- is a wedding kazoo.
Hubbard, a full-fledged musician who plays guitar, banjo, once played
bass for Chuck Berry, led 30,000 kazoo players at Oktoberfest in
Cincinnati, and is the only professional kazoo player to play at the John
F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington as part of a
children's series 10 years ago, now thinks he's on to his next big coup.
He has a marketing plan he's sending out to all major league and
triple-A minor league baseball teams this winter, offering his services
and thousands of kazoos as part of a promotional night.
Last summer, he sold the Chicago White Sox 15,000 custom-imprinted
kazoos to use as part of a music night at the team's ballpark.
"The deal is, if they buy a certain number of kazoos, I will fly to
their location and lead an organized kazoo band at their event. They have
hat nights, ball nights, now they can have their team logo put on a
kazoo," Hubbard says. "I'm real big into marketing."
That's evident by looking around the company's workplace, which sports
a new T-shirt the business is now marketing. Across its front with a
picture of a kazoo is a slogan that Hubbard, known for his zany antics,
has created. It reads, "If you build it, they will hum." Contact Rex Buntain at 706-8124 or rbuntain@islandpacket.com. |
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