“AEPi has been with me every step of the way. That’s why I always want to give back, to be there for others like they have been here for me,” said Brother Marc Newburger (Southern California, 1997). “My journey would be different if it wasn’t for AEPi.”
And, what a journey it has been and continues to be!
A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Marc started his entrepreneurship at a young age. While visiting real estate clients with his father, he became a salesman. “I had like a little legal pad, and we’d be in a store, and it would have a sign in the window. I’d go back home and open my up computer and bring up the Print Shop program (a very very very early design and layout program) and I would make a border and put in some pictures in there and then print out the banner on my dot matrix printer. I’d go back to the store and sell them the signs I made, and I never missed a sale, most likely because I was a cute kid selling them, but I thought I was a great businessman!”
When he was in eighth grade, his family moved to the west coast and Marc began looking at the world a little differently. When it was time to consider colleges, he looked at both East and West coast schools but as soon as he stepped foot on campus at USC, he knew he was home.
“I loved it there, but I wanted nothing to do with AEPi, but I met some great guys early on, many of them have gone on to amazing successes and many who helped me along the way. I remember during rush and one of the guys just kept reminding me that my fraternity brothers would be my best friends for the rest of my life and somehow, I realized that AEPi would be the best place for me.”
“But I made a promise to myself and with my pledge brothers that we were going to build AEPi up and make it the best house on campus. And guess what? We did!”
The men that Marc was in AEPi with became talent agents, film executives, business leaders and, most notably, Marc’s support system for years.
“Whenever I needed help, a brother was there for me.”
After obtaining his real estate license at night while in school so he could work with his father, Marc graduated USC with a degree in Real Estate Finance but, by then, he had been bitten by the acting bug and decided to stay in LA and try to make a career. And, while he didn’t become a hit, it was a near miss that may have changed his life.
“I was driving on Sunset Boulevard and my phone was sitting in the center console of my 2006 Prius. It had like first generation Bluetooth, so it didn’t have all of the fancy answer buttons and stuff on the steering wheel. A phone call was coming in and had to hit answer on the phone, but the vibration made the phone start shimmying off of the console. I saw it fall into the gap next to my seat and I didn’t let go of the wheel, but I tried to get the phone, and I yanked the wheel at 40 miles an hour and flew up on the sidewalk. I missed hitting a guy by like three feet because he jumped out of the way, and I missed hitting a tree by an inch. I just started screaming, ‘Why doesn’t somebody fix those cracks between the seats!’
“I called my friend Jeff (Jeff Simon, Marc’s longtime friend and business partner. Marc was living on his couch at the time.) and he was, of course, at first worried about me and after I realized that the guy didn’t have a scratch on him and neither did I, Jeff said to me, ‘There has to be something to fix that.’
The two went to one of the area’s largest car washes in Venice with hundreds of automotive accessories and couldn’t find a product that served the purpose. There was nothing like it there. Nothing on Google. It was like there was a glitch in the matrix.
“Jeff and I were food and health coaches at this point…I had sort of moved away from acting. We had gotten a good reputation and then this came out of nowhere. We met a woman who had lost her father in a car accident when he was driving and reaching for his phone, and we knew this was a path for us.”
The two began working to design a product and met with then AEPi CEO Andy Borans, who, during his travels and experience with rental cars was an early enthusiast of the idea and gave them some design ideas. “We were moving a car’s seat back and forth and we noticed that the seat belt kept moving with it and then Andy’s advice hit us, and we came up with the idea to anchor the product to the seat belt.”
And the beginning of the Drop Stop empire was born.
After getting the design finalized and manufacturing started, the two entrepreneurs began looking for ways to sell the product, beginning by selling them out of the trunk of their car at the Orange County Swap Meet and at a stand in a gas station.
“As health and nutrition coaches, we were all about helping people and now we realized we could help save lives.”
While retail sales were slow and the two were still working to get the product patented, they put together a commercial and got it on the air on late night television in LA. “People thought it was an SNL skit, but we got the attention of QVC and, eventually, Shark Tank.” But, without a patent, they were leery of going that route because of the threat of copycats.
“At this point, we had put everything we had into Drop Stop and we couldn’t get the patent, and we thought we were going to lose everything. I had gotten a loan from an AEPi brother to get our manufacturing started and, even though he helped us a lot with great terms, it was coming due. We were literally at the bank, cashing out Jeff’s retirement account when I had to go back outside for something, and the lawyer called and told me that the patent had been approved. I went back in the bank and told Jeff and filmed it. It was a magical incredible moment.”
From there, things started moving quicker. With a patent in place and $1 million in sales, they reached back to the contact at Shark Tank who they had rebuffed a couple of years later. Drop Stop was already being sold on QVC and then the Shark Tank appearance took things to the next level. “Lori was our shark and is still an incredible friend 10 years later. She’s always looking out for us.”
“Drop Stop just crossed the nine million mark (units sold) but there 14 million cars just in Los Angeles so we have a long way to go. We’re working on legislation that would mandate that auto makers would have to eliminate the gap. It would put us out of business, but people are dying because we’re in business.”
“AEPi brothers have been with me every step of the way. When I needed ideas…when I needed money…when I couldn’t pay my rent, Andy Borans rescued me. I hope I can help our brothers and be a mentor and friend like they were to me.”
#ProudtobeaPi
(AEPi is looking to restart our chapter at the University of Southern California. If you know of any unaffiliated young men who would make a good re-founding father at USC, please let us know!)