A LITTLE ABOUT BOXOLOGY

Hi, my name is Nick Johnson. Thanks for visiting! If you would like a little background on myself and the evolution of Boxology, please feel free to read on.

I was born in 1975 and raised on a farm just outside of a small Danish settlement town, Elk Horn, Iowa. My fascination with creating seemed to start with an erector set that my parents (aka Santa) gave to me. My love for music is rooted in listnening to vinyl records during cold winter days, my love for loud music was out of necessity as it included the discovery of a little band called Metallica and, at that age, a sister that needed sheer volume to be drowned out, love ya sis :).

I started tinkering as a DIY at around 12 years of age and it progressed into installing a radio in the farm truck with as many random speakers that I could fit in it. I learned a little something about Ohms law and what awful sounds like the hard way. I didn't give up and started getting into car audio and electronics magazines and soon had a subscription to every related magazine I could get my hands on. I read every word, studied every review, could rattle off the thd of most amplifiers on command, and found myself working on the stereo in my car after midnight quite often during High School. I soon became the go-to car stereo guy in my town.

My father was in the Army and stationed in Arlington in the Honor Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I am very proud of him for his accomplishments and wanted to see if it was a path for me so I goined the Iowa Army National Guard my Junior year in High School. After graduating High School and IANG Basic and AIT, I decided that staying in the National Guard and going to college was the route for me and was accepted into Iowa State University for a EE major and soon switched to a Business major.

Throughout my time at College, I continued to educate myself in the car audio field. Three years into college, I picked up a part-time job at a chain retailer in the car audio dept. Within the year, the assistant shop manger worked on a co-workers car that I had build a stealthy install in out of the house I was renting. He and the shop manger offered me a job in the installation bay on the spot. I pondered it for a few months and took the leap into installation apprenticeship. My teachers had both been in car audio installation for 30 years combined and really knew what they were doing. We were one of the very few stores in the large chain retailer that had custom fabrication tools and materials. I learned quite a few fabrication tricks of the trade from them and they also taught me the core of real-world business, repeating quality work and great customer service.

I then moved on with my installation career to a small mom-and-pop chain and was honored to work with and learn from another very talented crew. I was enlisted to help the lead custom fabricator of the shop (Bruce Wiegand) work on the shop car for USACi. We were honored to take 1st place in Pro 101-250 Watts at USACi World Finals that year (1998) with 370.4 points, the highest point score of any competitor of any class at the Finals showdown (http://www.soundoff.org/finales_results/viewable/1998.htm).

The following year I completed my service with the National Guard and was offered a custom installation position in Houston so off I went to see what life in Texas would bring. That same year (1999) Boston Acoustics used a car that I built in Houston as a display demo in their booth at USACi World Finals. Done deal, off I went to Finals again and it was great to catch up with some old collegues, but the soundoff show world wasn't for me. I simply prefered to keep my nose to the grindstone, advance my skillsets, and share with the talented people that I worked with.


My first line of replicated design enclosures was in 2000 and completely done out of necessity. I found myself too busy to accomodate clients who were on a tight schedule and took a few weekends to build some vehicle-specific mdf enclosures. The sales went well, clients were happy, and off to 2002 where I pulled my first large fiberglass mold out of my Dodge Ram and started reproducing fiberglass enclosures for clients. Fiberglass production started a whole new ballgame in enclosure design and construction for me, I could finally locate the enclosures where they performed the best where as with mdf construction it was not the case 95% of the time. With fiberglass being lighter and more resilient in the automotive environment, non-porous like mdf is, and having the ability to put the subwoofer in a location that creates the best overall bass with minimized phasing issues and maximum space savings, it became a no-brainer to move forward and leave the old way behind.

By 2003, I wasn't happy with the direction the business I worked for was heading. I had become the box builder and go-to shop manger in the chain to resolve installation errors by other locations. I was thankful to have practriced all that I had learned about advanced troubleshooting, but seeing the same mistakes time and again with customers that leave one location upset and leave my location happy can only go so far for my feelings of overall accomplishment and confidence in the company I worked for. There had to be a better way.

So, in 2003 I handed in my resignation, opened up my own business, Science of Sound, and started designing and manufacturing fiberglass enclosures. I started small in a friend's garage and it started to grow quickly. Within the year I had moved into a building. Over the next few years I finally had employees and started to expand into custom home theater fabrication and many odd-ball fabrication contracts. A bigger building was needed so we moved. Two years later we needed a bigger building again. With as many tools as we have collected over the years moving had become a big deal. Even with the crew we were looking at 2 months downtime for the move and setup. Finally I just bit the bullet and bought some land that had the building sizes we needed, lower overhead than what we were in at the time, and plenty of room to expand with demand. No more moving!

This year, 2010, we have made some critical changes. The Boxology side of the business was not on track with the goals we had set and the outourced customer service was something we knew we could improve on. Therefore, we decided to steer the ship in the right direction and are now proud to announce that we are direct to consumer so we can not only guarantee a great product with unbeatable value, but provide you with the best possible customer service.

Enough about us already, the present and future is about what we can do for you.

Thanks,

Nick Johnson, CEO
Boxology