A Conversation With ... Kevin Schauer

We manufacture a line of coat racks primarily for schools, churches and recreation centers. Occasionally, we’ll get involved in some shelving that complements the design of the coat racks. We (feel) that anything we make should be safe, durable, attractive and high capacity. We have anywhere from six to eight employees, depending on what we’re doing. We were in our garage for a number of years … but moved (to Merchants Field in Nixa) four years ago.

How did you get the idea to start making HangSafe Hooks?

I was standing at church one night watching my son … and all over the church we had what I call ‘eye pokers’ – the traditional coat hooks that stick straight out from the wall. … Nothing happened to my son, but they were the same height as his eyeballs, and I looked over, and I said, ‘This can’t be.’ Since I bellowed about it, the burden was on me to find an answer to replace those.

A period of time went by, and it came to me … plastic, in more of a vertical configuration. At that point in time, I didn’t know what kind of plastic, or how it could be fastened. I went investigating, and was led to Lexan plastic polycarbonate. It’s very strong. We sold the first HangSafe Hook in 1993.

The first ones, we had made, and then by happenstance, I sold some more and went back to see if that company could make us some more, and they said, ‘We made a mistake in the pricing, and we can’t make them as cheap as we originally sold them.’ So I walked out of there with a bunch of plastic instead, and we tore up a bunch of stuff until we got them made.

Tell us about your customer base.

We’ve got (customers) in 45 states, some in Canada and some in the United Kingdom. (Our product) is being accepted in a lot of places. We’re not in Arkansas, interestingly enough, or Nevada, West Virginia, Alaska or Hawaii. The state that’s the best to us outside Missouri is California.

What goals do you have for your business?

Certainly we want all of the 50 states filled in, but more than that, there are a lot of new schools … built every year, and I think just about every one of them needs HangSafe Hooks.

We hear horrifying stories every once in awhile of eye pokers penetrating the skull.

How do you reach your customers?

We have a Web site, www.hangsafehooks.com. Then there are different marketing campaigns we conduct, highly targeted, of course. Actually, a decent percentage of our business is repeat business.

Why did you decide to build your idea into a business?

I had the opportunity to be in business … when I was 20 years old. My father passed away suddenly. We were out in western Nebraska in those days, and we had a fuel distributorship. At that point, I had really never thought of being in business. But once I was, I liked the feel of being in business, and that’s something that I desired for my sons – one, that they would have the opportunity to (know) the satisfaction of having your own company, and two … I grew up around farming, and it seemed to me that youngsters who worked closely with their folks kind of had a leg up a little bit (and) acquired skills that maybe some of the other kids didn’t have, a sense of responsibility.

Tell us about your family.

My wife is Candra. I think that 99 percent of the wives out there would not have put up with what she did to make (HangSafe Hooks) fly. She’s sacrificed a lot.

We have four sons. Our oldest, Ryan, is active duty Air Force. His wife is Stacey, and they have our granddaughter and grandson. They live in the Kansas City area, and he’s a dental recruiter. My second son, Kirk, stayed engaged in our business the whole time he was in school, and at one juncture, I think he rescued it. We were getting tired and weary, but it took a young mind to pick up the pace and keep us going. Kirk’s wife is Megan. Megan’s moved to Tulsa, and Kirk’s joining her … to go to law school at the University of Tulsa.

Our third son is Aric, (who was partly the inspiration for HangSafe Hooks) is a second-year student at Evangel, and he’s involved with the business, too. Our youngest son Kyle is 12, and he pitches in too.

Interview by Features Editor Maria Hoover. You can e-mail her with suggestions for future installments of this feature at mhoover@sbj.net.[[In-content Ad]]