Imagineer Your Future: Discover Your Core Passions

Imagineer Your Future! Then Decide Where to Go From Here! When I was just a young boy, my grandfather taught me the skill of designing, building, and flying my first kite. That was a very valuable lesson! The kites we designed and constructed were made from sugar pine, wrapping string, newspaper, and white glue. The wise insights he provided me were my introduction to ‘handmade creativity. These lessons were added to my Eagle Scouting experiences with lightweight tubular tensioned tent poles and my formal graphic design training. All of this background inspired me to invent a brand-new display idea which dove-tailed nicely with the beginning wave of large-scale digital printing.

I put both of these concepts together to design my first Xtra Lite Display. With only $14 dollars of postage stamps and a list of magazine addresses from around the world, I sent out a letter and a photo explaining my new light-weight graphic display system. I began to receive orders almost instantly from countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Spain. After this larger-than-expected initial response, I founded Xtra Lite Display Systems, Inc. of Burnsville, Minnesota USA. Eventually, my displays were sold in over 36 countries around the globe and I collected over $14 million in revenue over 14 years of business.