A Better Mode To Longbox – The Drawerboxes Of Rich Vincent

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rv-1Neil Greenaway (of Nerd Team 30 ) writes for Bleeding Cool:

I take used the DrawerBox Storage Organization for years. When I first constitute them, I barbarous in honey with how easy they made it to sort through and file my comics. Through the past few years, I have slowly replaced all of my traditional long whites with the stronger drawer-style boxes, and it has revolutionized my collection. This yr at Phoenix Comicon I was able to sit downwards and talk with Rich Vincent, the creator of the astonishing collectable storage organisation.

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Haemorrhage Cool: You are the creator of the Drawer Box Comic Storage Arrangement. So start off, if I could get just a little bit of history, how did y'all come up with this box?

Rich Vincent: Oh it was definitely out of demand. I had a huge drove of comics, over 20,000 books that I had stuck in long boxes in the closet. These are comics that I bought when I was a kid. I have been collecting all my life. So one of my favorite comics is Magnus, Robot Fighter the Gold Key comics from the sixty'south. And there is one issue I really wanted to read, and I spent 2 hours pulling boxes out of the closet to detect it. So I realize then this is it, I take besides many comics. I take to go rid of one-half my drove. Merely since I had bought them when I was younger in that location were a lot of memories attached. I had to notice a better idea.

BC: And yous produce all the boxes yourself, is that true?

RV: That is right.

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BC: How did you go nearly getting that fix upwards? How does an average guy go about getting production lines put in place?

RV: The inspiration was, when I was younger in loftier school some of my friend's parents worked for Frontier Airlines and they used to use the broker boxes (that worked like drawers) for annal storage. When Frontier would clean out the files every one time in a while, they would bring them home and I used to put my comics in those. I remembered that thought then I went to a company, a box manufacturing company. People don't realize this but in that location are actually people with college degrees in bundle design, and so I worked with a package designer to actually work out the specifics of the box.

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BC: When did you start producing these? When were they kickoff bachelor?

RV: I've been doing it for 12 years. And interestingly enough, I had done an before run maybe eighteen years ago but I ran out of infinite. I needed some more. I idea well, if I make some, I should make a large run of them – similar mayhap i,000. So I thought I could endeavor selling them. I passed out fliers to a bunch of stores in Denver. I went to the San Diego Comic Con and passed out fliers at the San Diego Comic Con. I only got one back. So I thought, nobody cares, I'm not going to do it. For 3 years the thought gnawed at me. So I decided that I really needed some more than boxes. If nothing else I'm going to do some and take the loss. The residual is history.

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BC: Practice you find that you sell more to stores or to individual collectors?

RV: Really to individual collectors. It is a really interesting thing – psychology I guess – in the retail part of the manufacture, where the stores don't tend to want to try new things unless the customers are asking for it. And then I found I am in 125 maybe 150 stores in the country. Out of all those stores perhaps 5 or 6 are stores that I approached and they started carrying the product. Every other shop is considering customers are going in and demanding it.

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BC: Well that is really cracking to be that in need from your customers.

RV: It is, information technology really is. God love 'em.

BC: Practise you find that once a shop starts carrying your boxes, selling to the public, and getting reactions back, do the stores beginning using them for their ain product?

RV: Yep, that is actually happening more and more than. When I first started selling them, I thought that as a promotional matter I would give some to the stores to utilise. What I institute was I really didn't have to do that. There are a lot of stores out there that are operating on a shoestring upkeep and they need to get their back stock out and available to the customers. And of class information technology'south hugely expensive to build custom cabinets and stuff similar that so we became an alternative.

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BC: I myself have a huge collection of comics that for years was basically inaccessible for casual viewing until I institute your boxes at my local comic shop. I will confess to the interview audience that I have more 100 of these boxes property my own collection.

RV: God bless yous for that.

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BC: What appealed to me correct away was the $xv toll point. I observe that a regular long white with a chapeau nevertheless tends to price between $8-$10. The price of your boxes is higher, simply the quality is there to justify it.

RV: Well I'yard not quite that comparable. I've surveyed stores across the country. I would say the boilerplate price of a top loading long white, what I call the old fashioned long boxes, probably runs around $7 maybe $viii. Ours manifestly sell for more than than that. One of the things that drives our price bespeak is aircraft. And people don't realize this, they go onto our website to order and they say, 'Oh, I don't want to pay for shipping, I'm going to buy them in the store.' The reality of the state of affairs is the stores have to send them in and they are paying for that shipping and so they have to roll information technology into their toll. So where it looks similar people are paying extra for aircraft when they order directly, the reality is they are paying for shipping either way. It'southward just built into the toll.

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BC: Well fifty-fifty at that I would still say the longevity of the box is probably worth the increased price.

RV: Oh absolutely. I know I'yard kind of prejudice, but I retrieve there'due south a couple of reasons. I know our prices have to exist higher but considering there is twice as much fabric to ours every bit at that place is in an average long box. Our drawer lonely is the equivalent of a long box. Then the long box simply comes with lid, which is a very pocket-size corporeality of cardboard, and ours comes with the support sleeve and a shell. It is easily more than double the cloth, which means our manufacturing price is going to be more than double. Plus the fact that we are using upgraded materials. A lot of long boxes use fairly cheap materials. You lot come across a lot of boxes out there that they annunciate as Heavy Duty 200lb cardboard. Start of all, 200lb is non the correct measure for the strength of a box, 200lbs means it takes 200lbs to puncture the box. Secondly information technology'due south very low grade, pizza boxes are 175lb cardboard. Our shell alone is 300lb test and our back up sleeve is well higher up that. The correct mensurate for the stacking strength of cardboard is called the ECT rating, and our boxes ECT rating is closer to 44lbs per inch. Our sleeves are at present rated over 80lbs per inch considering nosotros utilize custom manufactured corrugated cardboard.

BC: For those of you who oasis't seen these drawer boxes, you have an exterior crush that the long white itself slides into only the piece that you can't meet (hiding inside the outside beat) is an interior crush that provides support. Was it always the three piece arrangement or was that something that evolved?

RV: It was always three pieces. We knew that one sheet past itself would never exist adequate.

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BC: Your boxes are stackable. I've heard a lot of people concerned about the boxes on the bottom. Because of the weight involved, people are afraid to take books in the box on the bottom for fearfulness that the boxes on top must be squishing it. What has been your experience with that?

RV: Well that is understandable thinking because people are used to having a agglomeration of long boxes. Long boxes were never designed to be stacked at all, which is to say if you lot become two or three high they are going to kickoff collapsing on y'all. We were designed to be stackable. And so probably the most disquisitional component was that support sleeve that goes within the box. That's why we are moving toward a triple wall construction. We take always used a triple wall in the magazine size, a double wall for the back up sleeve plus the outer shell. We are at present offering the same triple wall construction in our long size. We are going to do the triple wall structure in the brusk size this summertime because information technology's all nearly that back up sleeve. Funny story most that, I take a sure number of calls from people fourth dimension to fourth dimension that say, 'Hey, I've got a problem. My married man ordered some of your boxes and I idea I would exist helpful and put them together. I thought this sheet of paper-thin that came with it was only chip, only packing cloth, and so I threw information technology away. What do I do now?'

BC: Buy more?

RV: Well, nosotros have care of our customers. That is an understandable problem and we help our customers out that fashion. Information technology'south because people are not used to seeing that support sleeve and only take it for granted that information technology's only a piece of cardboard. Simply it's not, it's the most of import part!

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BC: It is overnice to have a company policy that can exist forgiving of a customers inexperience with the product. Your boxes can also exist locked together using small plastic clips. Could you tell united states of america a piddling flake nearly those connectors?

RV: Oh yes, the Box-Lox connectors. People use what I phone call the genu technique to open a drawer full of comics. In other words, they pull a drawer open up and rest information technology on their genu or they lift their articulatio genus up to kind of prop it open up. With our boxes information technology shouldn't be necessary to begin with because nosotros designed our boxes to work similar drawers, and part of any file cabinet or grocery drawer is y'all tin can pull information technology all the way out and it's going to hang open on its own. So we designed the boxes to be able to practice that. The problem we had was with the height row tipping upwardly, considering normally the lower rows are counterbalanced past the box on top of them. But if there is cipher on top of the top row information technology is going to tip upwardly when it's pulled out. And so nosotros knew we had to find a solution for that, and it took a lot of thought because nosotros had a very narrow space that whatever locking mechanism we used has to fit in. You have the exterior of the shell on one side and and then the drawer on the inside. So at that place's a very narrow space in betwixt to work with. Nosotros just had to develop a product that fit in that narrow space that locked everything securely.

BC: And did you guys blueprint and produce those yourself or is that something that you found?

RV: We kind of plant information technology. The fabric we use, I found it considering it was used for corrugated paper-thin tents in the Middle E. It was used to connect the sheets. And so we decided that since information technology was flat headed we could utilize that kind of material for the inside of the shells. We had some inspiration in that style.

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BC: Also, you had shown me today that y'all are creating a new line of self-adhesive box front end labels. Can you tell u.s. a little chip about that?

RV: Yes, this is going to be a lot of fun. There's a trend out there right at present to have decorated boxes, decorated long boxes. They are printed, well most of them aren't printed, in that location are five sheets that go on the outside of the box all the fashion effectually. I contemplated that for a while simply it didn't brand a whole lot of sense because of all the costs involved. Those boxes are really quite expensive. Just to have the decoration costs every bit much as our manifestly boxes. And so I thought, information technology'south senseless considering ours are designed to work in an array, with boxes on the side, boxes on acme and bottom which means you lot never see the tops and the sides so information technology doesn't make sense to spend a lot of coin decorating those. In ours, all you run across is the front of the boxes. And so what nosotros're developing at present is a series of labels that can be applied to the front of the box and it decorates the front of the box. We are going to have a whole diversity of things; one time we cut the dies nosotros can print a whole variety of fashions off the same die. Our first ane is what I'm calling the Wall Of Comics. When y'all go to any comic book store it's an countless source of fascination to see all those quondam comics behind the counter. We are going to effort a recreate that event with classic covers. Our first run will be famous artists. These volition be artists similar Frazetta, Reed Crandall and Al Williamson, covers from old historic comics. You tin have a different characterization for each drawer. That should exist coming out in another calendar month or two. Nosotros are working on the final measurements and the dies right at present. We are also working on licensing some classic covers that I can't really announce yet because the licenses aren't finalized. Then our long term plan is nosotros are going to follow that up with what I call the Drawer Box Window Panes. We are going to create the event of looking out the window with your array of boxes and seeing a scene. Whatever kind of scene you desire. Maybe it's various characters flying across the skyline of the city or something like that. It would be modular enough that if someone has an organisation that'south 5 across and 4 high, and someone else has an arrangement that is iv across and 4 high, or six beyond, they will be versatile enough that they tin can adapt to whatsoever the arrangement is. What we'll be able to do is create a mural on the boxes which will be very dramatic. Maybe eventually we volition even do some with very big images of some characters. Of course, all of that depends on the licensing simply that is the long term vision.

BC: I know that you are based out of Colorado, merely I know that you as well ship nationwide. What are the options for people who wanted to buy from another state?

RV: Starting time your local store is always an option, and as I said earlier, stores seem to be driven by customer requests. So let your store hear y'all loud and clear that yes, they tin gild boxes from us. Nosotros e'er love to talk to stores. Option number 2 is to go online to our website which is collectiondrawer.com and they can go in and see the website. So either fashion works.

BC: One more question, if people wanted to interact with this on Facebook, what is your Facebook folio?

RV: We practice have a Facebook page, it's called DrawerBox Storage System because first of all we are not simply a box. We are a mechanical device. We have to have load strength, we accept moving parts and things like that. When we designed the box it had to exist designed like a mechanical device. Secondly, we no longer think of ourselves as a box or a unit of measurement, something to put your comics in. We have multiple sizes for different types of collectables. They are all interchangeable in terms of the mail club. Yous can match then next for your collection so you lot tin take your magazines and put them beside your comics or have your records and put them abreast your comics, whatever you want.

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BC: It is worth noting that the magazine size boxes are perfect for holding a record collection as well, or slabbed comics.

RV: And of class we accept the upright divider arrangement to organize the collectables within the drawer. So we are no longer just a container. We are a comprehensive organization. So we changed our proper name to the DrawerBox Storage System, and that is our Facebook address.

BC: If people reading this wanted to interact with the community and encounter what other people thought, I recollect that would be a not bad place to start.

RV: Yeah I love to hear people's ideas and how they are using the DrawerBoxes on the Facebook page.

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About Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Absurd. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Writer of The Flying Friar, Holed Upwards, The Avengefuls, Dr. Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in S-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Begetter of 2. Political cartoonist.